


Gentleman Ranker

by elwisty



Series: The Three-Year Campaign [2]
Category: Neverwinter Nights
Genre: Battle, F/M, Friendship, Past, Trust, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29568579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwisty/pseuds/elwisty
Summary: “Life must be against death, and light against dark; a wolf must bide alone in the woods, and a hawk wild on the glove.” The end nears. One man isn’t as ready for it as he thought. Complete.
Relationships: Female Knight Captain/Ammon Jerro
Series: The Three-Year Campaign [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2172165
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. Nessus

  1. Nessus



_Before long we beheld the sheer obsidian ramparts and jutting crags which thrust into the dry prairie. On the sunlit lands of the Prime, two days might have passed since we departed the border. Here, unchanging dull twilight had accompanied our every step._

_At last, the mountain before me, indeed, the lofty centre of the Plane of Shadow itself, and my ambition almost achieved, it was only with an empty sense of its oppressive power that I stood at its foot._

_My guide proved unsusceptible to all my promises of wealth and fame; saying only that she would rather keep her life, she left, and I found myself in total solitude. Should any malevolent spirit chance upon my trail, I would have no companion or ally who would stand at my side._

_In a moment of weakness unworthy of my noble race, I questioned the reasons for my assay into the most obscure of the named worlds, and regretted the absence of those who a short time before I had held in contempt…_

Useless. There was nothing of value in the work at all. Only overblown prose and self-pity. Impatiently, he began to flick through the remaining pages. The author had to be a charlatan. Someone who, after gathering a set of accounts from the mouth of genuine travellers, wrote his foolish book as a compilation of anecdotes that his meagre experience could not possibly encompass.

What kind of mage would cross into the Plane of Shadow and walk to the highest mountain in the accursed place without a plan – equipment – means of escape? And only then to ask himself what he was doing there?

As far as he could see, the irritating man had filled the final chapter with highly suspect reports of battles with the souls of the dead. If such events really had occurred, the author would never have survived to write about them.

He put the book down on his desk with more force than he’d intended. Vials of powdered nitre rattled in their wooden case; oil of vitriol slapped against the insides of its sealed jar.

How deeply he hated this endless waiting. Waiting for news of the bridges, waiting to hear if Farlong would return, waiting for the last battle of his life, perhaps… Would the enemy arrive tomorrow? The day after? In a ten-day?

Until the army of the King of Shadows was at the gates, he had to conserve his strength. Apart from the most minor cantrips, he didn’t dare utilise his gifts. As for the rest…he knew every inch of the castle and its defences; he knew how many soldiers were in the garrison and how well they were armed, and how the forces of their allies, the dwarves and lizardmen, were organised. And now – there was nothing to do.

He should never have agreed to play the bodyguard to the last column of civilians to depart the Keep. It had been a serious mistake to let Farlong talk him into it. Naturally, the end of everything had seen fit to begin during his short absence.

Had Farlong intended it to be so? He examined the thought from all sides, feeling faintly uncomfortable. As if his skin had been touched by the scales of a venomous snake. He quickly let the idea drop. It was impossible: he was essential to the war as a consequence of the shared Ritual of Purification, and by extension essential to her.

He froze.

There was the sound of light breathing. Coming from somewhere to the right. His muscles tensed. His fingers closed on the hilt of his knife. Someone was in the basement with him, hiding behind a tower of old crates.

“Show yourself!” He stood, staring in the direction of the breathing. The knife hilt became warm in his palm as some of his power seeped into it.

A head appeared round the edge of the crates. The face on it was snub, unprepossessing. The stable boy looked as if he’d been dropped on his nose as an infant on more than one occasion. Ammon let his hand fall to his side.

“What are you here for, boy?” Kipp. That was the name. He had no intention of using it; it was just the sort of acknowledgement the boy would value, and then he’d never be rid of him. “There must be a horse that needs your attention in the stables.”

The rest of Kipp’s body followed the head. He was a tall, gangly boy; perhaps fourteen years old. Apparently he’d once had some skill in the tiefling’s field of operations, being capable of stealth and slight-of-hand, but his adolescent awkwardness seemed to have diminished those abilities - if this evening’s performance was taken as evidence.

“Na. They’re off to Helm’s Hold, the half of ‘em. Nothing to do in the stables ‘cept count straw.” The flat vowels of the Harbour accent rang across the basement. “It’s boring up there. Most of the other lads are gone.”

The boy kicked the toes of his boots on the floor. His gaze rolled around the room, as uncoordinated as his limbs.

“You should have gone with them.”

“Volunteered to stay. Help with the war an’ that. Didn’t realise it would be this boring.” He continued his morose assault on the floor.

Ammon watched him, at a loss as to how to banish the boy from his domain. Intimidation didn’t work: he’d tried that in the past. As for threats, he never made idle ones. While he might be able to drain Kipp’s body of blood with a wave of his hand, the thought that he would was absurd. Besides, nothing dreamed of in Baator could inflict quite the same quality of suffering and indignity as nature perpetrated with abandon on fourteen-year-old boys.

He was about to tell him to report to one of the sergeants – wasn’t the stolid Sergeant Bevil another West Harbour survivor? – when the boy’s drifting gaze came to rest on the summoning circle. The pale purple light cast a sickly glow on his face. He took four steps towards it, his head stretched out on his scrawny neck like a lizard tasting the air.

In order to close those paths that Garius and his band of dunces had contrived to open, Ammon had placed warding spells on it. Still, such a place was never without danger. He had once disposed of a Red Wizard by shoving her into the centre of a supposedly inert circle. A claw had appeared from its mosaiced surface, and fastened round her ankle. She and it had disappeared before he could even consider uttering words of dismissal.

“ _Stay back_.”

Kipp stopped on the spot. “It don’t –” He broke off, and resumed in an effortful approximation of court speech, “it doesn’t look dangerous.”

“Appearances are deceptive.”

The boy frowned; he seemed to be deliberating over the idea. “S’pose.” He frowned again. “I mean, I su-ppose so.” The circle was still absorbing his attention. “Can you summon demons from the hells? Orlen says you can.”

“No,” Ammon replied curtly. He did not care to deliver a lecture on the nomenclature of the creatures that inhabited the lower planes to a sub-literate stable boy. Moreover, he wanted to stifle his curiosity regarding the circle, not stoke it.

“But Orlen said –” Orlen. Yet another Harbourman causing trouble.

“Pay no attention to farmers’ gossip. This Orlen of yours may know how to keep pigs very well; he should keep to his speciality and leave me to mine.”

“Can you summon _anything_?” At least the boy was looking at Ammon instead of the circle. Places of power such as that had a habit of beguiling the vulnerable, like the lantern bearers in the Mere.

“When necessary, yes.”

“Are you going to summon stuff now?”

“No.”

“What about in the battle?”

“Perhaps.”

“How do you get to be a warlock? Is it hard?”

“It’s an inherent state. It cannot be chosen.” Though it could be developed. As yet, he hadn’t discovered a natural end point. That idea would have excited him once.

“Could I be a warlock?”

“No.”

“You could tell just like that?”

“Such a talent would be immediately obvious to me.” He wouldn’t have been able to occupy the same room at him without recognising it.

The boy shoved his hands into his pockets, looking morose again. He tilted his face to the left. The shadows from the torches shifted, and gathered in the hollows of his cheeks. Black hair, pale skin, dark eyes. For a heartbeat, it felt as if he was looking at his nephew; they were the same age, same height. Though his nephew had been lame and – damaged.

“Speak to Sergeant Bevil.” Ammon wanted the boy out of his sight immediately. “There will be work for you upstairs.”

Kipp moved again, and the illusion was broken. He was back to being an overgrown, underemployed urchin with no apparent sense of danger.

“Bevil and me… Bevil _and I_ …we don’t get on,” said the boy. “I used to play tricks on him when I was small.”

“You chose to be here. This is a war. Whether you like your allies or not is irrelevant.” His current band of associates looked, and mostly acted, like the dregs of a hiring fair on the last day of spring; admittedly, there was ability there too, and power. And some wit, in the case of one or two of them.

Kipp narrowed one eye, and pulled the other open wide in a gesture that had no clear significance. “That’s fine for you to say,” he remarked, his voice cracking midway through the complaint. “Bevil wouldn’t dare tell you to go and clean the privies.”

“Correct.” To his own surprise, he had to struggle to keep any hint of a smile out of his expression.

“So what about a mage? How do people become mages? They’re not magic from birth too, are they?”

“No. Mages acquire their skills through years of rigorous study and practice.”

Kipp chewed his lip, and nodded thoughtfully. “That could suit me then. Mages don’t get pushed around.”

The temptation to ask exactly which part of ‘years of rigorous study’ he had failed to understand was strong, but questions should be avoided, even rhetorical ones. They would be taken as an invitation to linger. A few months ago, Ammon had made the mistake of telling him to pass the lead-rope of a horse, and that one action had burnt up whatever caution the boy might have felt towards him.

“I can read,” said the boy, and flushed, though Ammon hadn’t voiced his scepticism beyond raising his eyebrows. “I learned ages ago. Li – I mean, Captain Farlong taught me. Before she got famous.”

“Then persuade her to teach you to fight as well. She does it well enough.” If Farlong was still alive. That particular proviso had shot back into relevance in the last day.

“Can’t.” Kipp drew his brows together.

“When she returns.” The brows lowered, and the frown-turned-scowl became fixed on a jar of adamantine dust.

“Still can’t. She’s always with you.”

“Don’t be –”

The first shivering chime of the alarm bell cut off his retort. It sounded at a higher pitch than the general one used for signals within the castle. Before the bell could ring again, Ammon had clipped the sheath of his falchion onto his belt. _At last_. Sparks of black fire began to warm the palm of his left hand. The blood ran hot in his veins.

He was at the stairs before he realised the boy had chased after him. Impatiently, he swung round. The boy was gaping at him.

“Stay here. Don’t touch the circle.”

“Is the enemy here then?” Kipp breathed. “What about the bridge people?”

Ammon hesitated. He hadn’t thought beyond his own visceral reaction to the alarm; discovering that an adolescent peasant boy had responded with more acuity than he was less than gratifying. The bell would certainly not have been rung to mark the return of the expedition to the bridges. And if it meant that the forces of the Guardian were here so soon, then that could imply disaster for Farlong’s party. But, now that he considered it, he believed he had heard three separate peals. That meant an emergency _within_ the Keep.

“Wait here,” he reiterated. He let flames flare in his hand to encourage obedience. “And stay out of my way.”


	2. Cania

  1. Cania



He turned and strode up the steps. For once, the boy seemed to have done what he was told: there was no sound of feet peltering after him. At the top, he paused. Normal procedure with an alarm would be to wait in the main hall. He could see the hall through the open doorway a few yards away. It was empty, and he was tired of waiting.

A couple of Greycloak guards in full armour jogged heavily down the passage. They noticed him in time to cleave as closely as they could to the opposite wall. He let them skulk past. They were almost at the hall when he called after them.

“You! What caused the alarm?”

They stumbled to a halt, and looked at him, then at each other. He didn’t recognise the faces under the helmets. Probably newer recruits, in that case. Unless Luskan was trying to infiltrate the Keep with some truly lamentable spies. The City of Sails couldn’t be that desperate.

“Don’t know.”

“We heard it and ran.” The guard was clinging to a Tyrran pendant round his neck, as if hoping it had apotropaic properties.

“So carry on running,” he told the pair. They disappeared into the main hall.

There was something he could try. It didn’t work everywhere in the patchwork castle; here, where blocks of basalt hewn from quarries in the Sword Mountains made up the walls, the trick could function.

He rested the tips of his fingers against a section of quartz-dotted rock, and allowed a little of his power to flow into it. It wound and twisted from speck to speck of quartz and volcanic glass; he could feel it forming connections through the wall, spreading up to the towers and curving back on itself somewhere below him, where limestone foundations opposed its further progress.

He closed his eyes, and listened. For a moment there was nothing except the voices of the Greycloaks that he could detect with his normal senses. Then he heard the voice of the stone. It cracked, and it hissed. It remembered how it had felt to break open the skin of the earth, and surge forth in triumph before spreading itself out across the blackened land to rest. _It is time to wake again? Is the great fire coming once more?_

 _No. It is not that time_. He forced his mind through the dry opposition of the basalt. Ignoring the stone, looking for the echoes of living conversations. Greycloaks complained; the giant spider Kistrel clacked its mandibles together; a cook yelled orders like a general.

More quickly than he’d expected, he found what he was looking for. Raised voices on the first floor. Not directly above him, but on the far side of the Keep.

Letting his hand drop, paying no heed to the sigh of the rock as it sank back to sleep, he returned to the staircase, and raced up it. He unsheathed his falchion as he followed the corridor past a succession of unoccupied bedrooms. Where it branched, he turned left.

If this alarm was some foolish prank, he was going to kill the perpetrators and explain himself to the seneschal later.

But then he recognised the voices, and frowned. Left turn, another right, and he saw them. Casavir the outcast knight, and Elanee the elf druid. His arms were folded, and his mouth was a straight, pale line. She was gesticulating, and seemed overwrought: unusual for her. She’d looked less distressed after helping them put down her druidic order.

They didn’t register his approach. He paused, listening.

“—and he said he didn’t know where he was going. But it was his choice, and he’d decide when and how he wanted to—”

The druid shuddered, and brushed a lock of hair away from her face. This didn’t sound like a lovers’ quarrel. He stepped forward. Let the point of his falchion sink, but didn’t resheathe it.

“Who sounded the alarm? What’s happened?”

Casavir stepped away from the wall, and drew himself up to his full height, facing him. The human and the elf exchanged a look that he couldn’t interpret.

“I did,” said Elanee. Her impassive self-control was already returning in full force. She raised her chin.

“And you were right to do so,” Casavir assured her before turning back to him. “Explanations should wait until the others have arrived.”

The paladin’s belief in collective decision-making was relentless. Exactly how valuable did he believe the likes of Khelgar would be if any kind of intelligence were required?

“You sounded the alarm bell,” he explained, choosing small words to make the situation as plain as possible to them. “People do that when there is a crisis. If there is a crisis, tell me now while there’s time to take action. If there isn’t, by all means stand around in a corridor while our associates wander the castle. They have no idea where you are, or even who they should be looking for.”

The couple exchanged another look. Then the druid shrugged. “The immediate crisis is beyond fixing. No one can mend it.”

“I fear so,” said Casavir. The man’s pallid face, excess of manners and permanent gloom made him as difficult to read as the druid. Though the little he’d heard had already sufficed to give him the shadow of an idea of what had happened.

“We should go to find Kana in the main hall,” said the druid, and added before he could object, “and I will tell you the details as we go.”

Her expression was stubborn. That was the most he would get out of her, short of a fight.

“Then begin.”

He stepped back, so that the couple were obliged to walk ahead of him. It would keep the druid off-balance as she gave her account. Apart from that, he disliked having creatures outside his sphere of control at his back. It felt too close to being prey. A man could become well-schooled in that feeling in some places.

“Bishop’s gone,” said Elanee. “He appeared in my room an hour ago looking…worse…that usual.” Drunk, presumably. Visibly so, which wasn’t always the case with the ranger. “He said everyone would get what was coming to them, and that there were worse things than shadows. He – ah – talked a lot about nature always giving victory to the stronger. He said he was tired of being treated as a spy by both of you and by Lila, and he was leaving—”

Casavir was guiding the druid along by an elbow, perhaps to stop her walking into the walls as she tried to speak to both of them at the same time. He looked away from her long enough to meet Ammon’s eyes.

They had both been amongst those charged with monitoring Bishop. The knight, as he understood it, had been the first to raise suspicions about what exactly the ranger was doing on his scouting missions. There had never been undeniable proof, only a series of coincidences. But, spy or not, the man was dangerous.

“Bishop told you this _one hour_ ago?” He looked at the druid’s wrists for signs of rope-burn marks; there was nothing. If she’d been held prisoner, he’d have understood the emotional scene he’d witnessed at the door to the druid’s room.

“He asked me to give him an hour’s head-start. Enough time to get well clear of any pursuit. So I did.”

“You—” He bit back a slew of uncomplimentary epithets. Fool. Traitor. Weak-minded, naïve imbecile. But what else could one expect of a damned druid of Silvanus? Gullibility and compliance were the main qualities the gods valued in their followers in his experience, and not an abundance of brains. “The man knows too much. He knows the castle, and the troops. No doubt he’s intimate with our plans for defence _and_ attack. What were you thinking? If you’re in league with him—”

They had come to a dead stop. Casavir was half-screening the druid from him with his body. Another moment, and Ammon realised that black flames were running down the blade of his falchion. His heartbeat was racing as if this were a battlefield.

Elanee stepped from behind the shelter of her hulking cavalier. She looked at him coolly. “There are three things that you should know, Ammon Jerro.” The echo of the zerth, whether conscious or accidental, was not a promising beginning. Still, he sheathed the sword, prepared to listen.

“Well?”

“First, Bishop asked me to leave with him and I refused. Second, if I had roused the castle, he would never have let himself be taken without a fight. I’m sure the lives of the Greycloaks mean nothing to you, but you will need them to defend the walls nevertheless.”

His favourite brother had been a Greycloak. Darmon, whose inferior namesake was strutting around in a tunic of the Neverwinter Nine some few miles to the north. He gritted his teeth against the intrusion of the thought. Captain Darmon of the Eastern Army had to stay in the locked chest at the furthest corner of his memory, along with all the others.

“Third,” continued the druid, “I am not a slave holder. Bishop is not one of your demons to be trapped against his will in a magic circle. I will not be a jailor, for you or Lord Nasher or anyone.”

Her green eyes widened a little in – anger, he supposed. For once, she seemed to have descended out of the mystic fog that was her preferred abode, albeit not very far.

“Those principles of yours will prove a fine comfort should Casavir wake up with a hole in his throat.”

He shook his head in disgust. They were a day or less away from a state of siege, their captain was absent, and the Sword of Gith with her, and the druid didn’t seem to grasp the qualitative difference between their situation and a children’s picnic. He didn’t even want to kill Bishop – merely lock him up for a ten-day, then throw him through a portal to somewhere remote. Stygia, say.

“I am willing to accept that risk,” Casavir muttered to the druid.

“He wouldn’t—” said the druid. Her fingers touched the paladin’s wrist.

“True. I’m sure he’d rather kill you slowly while you’re awake,” Ammon snapped. His temper was retreating, leaving space for him to suspect that he’d gone too far. And paid for it with more delay.

“Leave it be,” Casavir told him without audible hostility. “We should—” He stopped. The black eyebrows that stood out on his pale flesh like inkblots contracted.

“What?”

“Lord Nasher. What if Bishop decided to harm him? As a parting gesture.” Not a _stupid_ man, the knight, despite his religiosity. At another time, Ammon might have been tempted to leave the injured ruler of Neverwinter to whatever fate had in store for him. If Farlong were here, she’d be reminding him who it was that covered the Greycloak payroll. No, Nasher had to live. But what if he wasn’t the only possible target?

“The library,” he said. “Aldanon keeps his research there. Bishop could cripple us without needing to strike a blow.” There was a fireplace in the library. Feeding in a handful of parchment and the most important volumes of lore would have been a few minutes’ work. Aldanon would have offered no resistance. And the secretary – Harcourt? Unlikely.

“Warn Nasher’s guards,” he told Casavir, ignoring the druid. He was still too angry to trust himself to speak with her. “Ascertain the man’s condition. I will pay a visit to Aldanon.”

Better Aldanon than Nasher. He hadn’t spoken to the upstart princeling since the year before the disaster at West Harbour. Given the choice, he’d see out the century without renewing their acquaintance.

He didn’t wait for Casavir’s response. Action was called for now, not more petty disputes. As he reached the southern staircase, one of the sergeants appeared with a couple of regular Greycloaks at his heels.

“You…Draygood.” He recognised this sergeant as the garrison’s occasional standard-bearer.

“Yes, sir!” Draygood saluted. Since Ammon had no rank in the Keep’s official hierarchy, it was unnecessary, if not without utility.

“The ranger Bishop may have concealed himself somewhere in the Keep. He is no longer to be considered an ally. Search for him – if you find him, tell me. Do not attempt to stop him on your own.”

“Very good, sir. We were sent to search the castle anyway. At least now we know what we’re looking for.” The sergeant’s phlegmatic example impressed him. Still, it didn’t prevent one of his followers, the very one he had recently encountered near the hall, from clutching at his Tyrran pendant and shrinking, apparently repelled by Ammon’s mere presence.

He shoved past him. The man squeaked.

Down more stairs and round another corner. The library was ahead of him.

When he was a spear-length away from it, the door swung open.


	3. Maladomini

  1. Maladomini



The neat figure of the secretary Harcourt stepped out. He frowned as he saw Ammon, then straightened, and drew the door closed softly behind him.

“What do you want?” the he asked, making no attempt to disguise his loathing. Perhaps he had judged wrongly, and the young man would have been capable of standing up to Bishop. Trying to, at least. “It’s late.”

Brought up in the household of the very late Lord Hawkes, Farlong had said. Ammon should possibly have spoken to him about that, but doing so would have raised old ghosts from the dust. They were better left as footnotes in unread history books.

“Let me past. I require Aldanon.”

Harcourt lifted his chin, and did not move. The stance would have been more convincing had the chin not been covered in ink blots, and had the hand on the library door not obviously trembled.

“I don’t think you have any authority to give me orders.”

“No more than you have to stop me.” He had already almost lost his temper once that evening. A second outburst would not give him any advantage. If he could still remember how to do it, then a less combative approach might prove more effectual.

He moved closer to the secretary, holding his hands clear of his sides, tilted so the palms were visible to show that he was not planning to send the young man to join his patron.

Harcourt did step back then; but, to give him credit, he continued to make eye contact. Ammon dropped his voice one notch lower than normal. “Have you or your master left the library tonight? Have you seen Bishop?”

Some of the mulish hatred, legible in every line of the secretary’s face, flickered in surprise and faded. Curiosity could be more powerful than an old injury. Occasionally. “No, on both counts. Why?”

Ammon outlined the situation in a few sentences. In a sense, he should be grateful to the ranger for boozing and blaspheming away his own reputation so openly; it made the task of convincing Harcourt that the man was a threat much easier.

“There is no danger to the books or pages of notes,” the secretary explained. His outward hostility had shifted into an inward reckoning up of numbers and places. “Everything relevant to the portal I copy out in triplicate, and store in different locations. Bishop couldn’t possibly know them all. Even if he did…I don’t think he’d have the patience to track them down.”

Extreme competence wasn’t a quality he associated with the secretarial class, and with precious few people in the employ of Neverwinter, come to that. If Harcourt had revealed that he could cast all two hundred of the spells of Mordenkainen, it would hardly have been more surprising.

“Aldanon himself is unharmed?” The question seemed superfluous now.

“Certainly.” Harcourt’s outward gaze returned, alongside a measure of the dislike. “Speak to him yourself, if you want. Though it will break his concentration.”

Harcourt moved aside from the door. If what the secretary said was true, there was no need to inspect the library, and he could proceed directly to the main hall without having to suffer through any of Aldanon’s conversational ouroborai.

But Harcourt was still too much of an unknown quantity. It could well have been him that passed Ammon’s name and location to the heavy from the City Watch last autumn. To see that all was well with the research, he would have to check the library himself.

With a last glance at the secretary, he went in. The fire was lit, and with good pine logs from Marlside by the look of them. Not with crucial documents. A few sparks crackled as bark warped and charred in the flames.

Aldanon was sitting at his desk, his back to the door and the fireplace. A large book was propped up in a stand before him, its pages elaborately decorated in coloured inks.

Ammon watched him long enough to see him turn a page, then crossed to a table overloaded with papers. He flicked through a few. All seemed in order.

A secret passage leading to the fields beyond the Keep had once emerged behind a panelled door at the far corner of the library. The passage had been blocked up at the nearer end, and the entrance outside collapsed completely, but a small part of the old tunnel remained accessible. The part nearest the library, as it happened.

The hinges on the movable panel had been well-oiled, and swung open uncomplainingly. He took care to stand to one side as a precaution against the archer than might be lurking in the darkness beyond.

Only after conjuring a sphere of magelight and sending it ahead of him did he inspect the abbreviated remains of the passage. Crates, a pile of books, a case of unopened wine bottles. Nothing suspicious.

That was good, he told himself. He supposed he should be glad that the library was undisturbed, and that wherever Bishop had gone, it wasn’t here. Fortunately for the ranger. His fingers, curled in anticipation of the possible battle, relaxed. He closed the panel. This time, it creaked.

“Ammon! How nice to see you here. What a pity it’s such a long way from your basement, or you could visit us more often.”

The old scholar’s flowing hair shone bright white in the glow from the fire; his smile was cherubic. Ammon did not smile back.

“Aldanon. How close are you now?”

The man’s cheerfulness was undimmed. “Thirty pages to go yet. In any other work, that would be five minutes of reading. But these are simply so intricate, each one a work of art in itself – I lose myself in them, you know. Do come and look.”

Instead of telling the scholar that he had pressing business elsewhere, he found himself advancing towards the desk. But he wasn’t taken in by the free-floating amiability, no: for someone from no wealthy background, without power or influence, he had done extraordinarily well for himself. A mansion in the Blacklake. A pack of nieces in with the Waterdhavian court, according to the talk in the Keep. The dislocated manner was in all probability a screen. Sometimes it could be very convenient to be overlooked.

“Isn’t it marvellous?” Aldanon breathed. “Look, there’s even a tiny squirrel looking out of the branches, as if it’s wondering what kind of reading material I’d make...”

Prolix. Unindexable. Irritating. He scanned the page. “It’s a book about trees.”

“Yes! To be precise, about the new kinds of tree the author discovered around Chelimber.”

He almost asked what the author’s name was, but stopped himself before he could be drawn any further into Aldanon’s nonsense. Slowly, articulating each consonant with a care he would normally reserve for incantations, he said, “The portal. What about the portal to the Illefarn Palace? _We are running out of time_.”

Aldanon waved a hand airily in a rejection of Ammon’s concerns. With the other, he cradled the cut edges of the leaves of his latest treasure. “Oh, that. Well, it’s done. Almost done, anyway. A few little refinements, and it’s ready to go. I would have hurried to put them in place, but my secretary assures me that you’re all still waiting for Captain Farlong.”

“How long will these refinements take, precisely?”

“Oh, not long. If you’re very set on arriving with all your fingers on the right way round, I would say two days. Any more condensed a schedule would inevitably lead to errors.” He daintily turned a page of thick, high-quality paper to reveal another woodland cross-section. “More haste, less speed, as Master Gorloi always said. Do you remember him? One of the Masters at the Academy. Very strong right arm for a divinator. Could have been a tremendous blacksmith.”

If the wretch had been allowed to use small children as his anvil, certainly. “After my time.”

Aldanon tore his eyes away from the book long enough to glance towards him. “You look very tense, Ammon. Is everything alright?”

“Yes.” He clasped his hands behind his back so that the scholar would not be tempted to pat one of them.

“You should make more time for yourself, you know,” Aldanon continued blithely, seemingly unaware of just how close he was to being strangled. “Even scholars like ourselves should not work all the time.” His eyes glinted behind his much-mended spectacles. “But of course! You’re worried about your antique sword. Well, I don’t think you need to concern yourself about that at all. After all, it can hardly get any more broken, can it? And I’m sure that lively young captain of yours will take good care of it.”

This conversation was not going to end with Aldanon promising to put aside his book of trees and labour through the night so that the portal could be opened at dawn. In any case, the man was right – no attack on the King of Shadows could be ventured until the mission to the bridges returned, at the earliest.

And they would return. They had to. He willed himself to believe that what the scholar had said was true, and the tension that had gripped him for the last day was purely owing to strategy. The Sword. The pieces of the Ritual. He could almost believe that it was so, if he didn’t examine the matter too closely.

Aldanon had already returned his attention to his book.

In the corridor, he found Harcourt leaning against a wall. “Satisfied?” The tone was scathing. Ammon didn’t waste an answer on him.

The absence of screams and running feet led him to the conclusion that Nasher’s soul was still within his ailing body. It could be that the ranger had simply…left…and taken himself off to trouble people in another part of the world. Given the man’s character, nothing so mutually convenient could be relied upon. He could have run straight to Garius, of course… His knowledge of the castle’s defences alone could win him a place in the enemy’s ranks.

When he reached the main hall, it was thronged with guardsmen, and the collection of oddities who comprised Farlong’s informal warband. No sign of Farlong herself yet.

The druid was looking uneasily round the circle of her battle-companions, as twitchy as a deer caught alone on open ground. Their interrogation technique was lacking, fortunately for her: they were all still at the stage of asking different questions loudly at the same time.

Ammon left them to it. The seneschal was observing the racket from a distance, her expression the usual one of careful neutrality. From her, he was quickly able to learn that no harm had come to Nasher, that Bishop had not been sighted since leaving the druid’s chamber, and that Casavir was already away with Jalboun and Sand to search The Phoenix Tail.

Where next? He doubted the druid had anything more to divulge. If she was Bishop’s ally, he would never bring her to admit it without the use of methods more suited to Baator than here. A party of three people should be more than enough to examine one room in a tavern; Sand would notice what the other two missed. The elf’s prating about his investigatory skills did have some foundation in reality.

Everything seemed under control. Seemed. His instincts barred him from complacency.

“I never trusted the bastard!” Khelgar’s voice rose above the rest. “He broke bread with us, and fought with us – and now! – sauntering off when we need him. Milk-spirited son of a rat…” The dwarf paused, and added as a terminus. “ _Bastard._ ”

“You don’t think he’s gone over to the other side then?” said the adolescent sorceress. “I do. I would…” Her eyes darted to where Ammon stood next to the seneschal “…think he was already half-way back to his disgusting swamp.”

“You mean he’s a traitor as well as a deserter?” The dwarf seemed close to apoplexy.

“We don’t know that,” the druid maintained. “He didn’t say he’d join Garius. He only said he wanted to leave.” In her position, he would not have wanted to be seen making excuses for the man. He couldn’t be the only one with suspicions, and eventually they’d reach the knight, if they hadn’t already.

“He was miserable here,” she continued. “He thought rumours of what he’d done – in his past – were spreading, and thought no one would speak for him if Nasher moved against him.”

“He should have left this place long before…” the Zerth priestess began, and he decided to treat her statement as advice. It was the only clear thing she was likely to say for the rest of the evening. More than likely she would agree with the druid, since her kind were fixated on their ancient slavery under the Illithid; whether anyone else would understand what her froth of metaphors meant was another matter.

Before he pushed the main door ajar, he took care to pull the hood of his surcoat over his head. It could hide the light of his tattoos to some extent. More thorough precautions would be at the cost of a small amount of power, and the situation did not require that.

Not yet.


	4. Stygia

  1. Stygia



He slipped out into the bailey. After so many hours spent within stone walls, the sense of space, of the star-spread night sky that connected the dot that was Crossroad Keep with Neverwinter, Luskan, and beyond – with the fate-blasted desert of Anauroch, Cormyr, Chessenta and Thay – made him feel…almost at ease.

It was ridiculous, he supposed. Farlong would have serious problems apart from the shadow army if certain people in half of those places found out where he was located.

He walked down the slope, passing the end of the truncated innermost wall as he neared The Phoenix Tail. A large wagon had been left nearby. If the ring-walls failed, the wagon could be overturned as the foundation of a last barricade; one more chance to hold the enemy back from the Keep doors. It was his idea, one created for an eventuality that should never be allowed to happen. With Garius and his army out of the Mere, the next days would be the ideal time to strike behind their lines.

Torches burned around the gate. The inner ring-wall was dark in contrast: the result of a recent prohibition to encourage the sentries to make use of their night vision instead of dutifully patrolling patches of lantern-light.

He spoke to the gate guards. Had they been briefed? Yes, sir. Noticed anything unusual. No, sir, not if you’re meaning that ranger… He turned away, but the guard hadn’t finished.

“We got word from our watcher on the Withe. She saw the first and second bridges fall about two hours before sunset. She wasn’t sure about the third.”

Two hours before sunset was two hours later than expected. Still, that was promising news. Assuming the third bridge was brought down around the same time as the first two, the return of the party of amateur sappers might be imminent. And if all had not gone well at the third bridge…?

“Be watchful,” he told the gate guards. The one who’d spoken saluted. The other didn’t, and began to jeer at his companion’s error in protocol as soon as he thought it safe to do so.

Ammon paid no heed to the blather behind him. Only one thing counted. His nephew was waiting for him, leaning against the wagon to reduce the burden on his misshapen leg.

Of course, it couldn’t be him. Corentine had been lying dead on his back in his cousin’s garden, his face to the stars, when he’d last seen him. He rubbed his eyes, refocused.

It was the damned boy from West Harbour again. Farlong’s pet or protegé or both. He was lounging beside the wagon, but drew himself upright abruptly when he realised he’d been spotted.

Ammon turned in an abrupt right-angle, and marched away from the Keep. He didn’t care about the boy, but he had just recalled that The Phoenix Tail had a narrow side-door, one that was mostly used by the servers to take the slops out to the midden. There was a window above it too – on the first floor, easy enough for a fit young man to climb out of if he had a mind. Or even for a ranger pickled to the eyeballs in Uthgardt firewater.

“I saw you leave the hall,” Kipp said, appearing on his left. He was almost bouncing with excitement. “What’re you doing?”

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“Do you want a message sent? I can run messages. Kana’s been doing that loads since the kids – children, that is – got sent north.”

“No. Now return to your actual duties, or I will see you sent after them.” At least there was one threat he could make to the boy that wasn’t without substance. He’d tie him to a horse and set a company of skeletons to drive them north to Neverwinter, if he had to.

“I could watch your back while you’re hunting Bishop. I never liked him anyway. Mean as mud.” The boy sniffed. “And he’s _short._ ”

There was some cause for hope then. Another growth spurt, and the boy might leave him alone in favour of pestering Casavir. Or Nevalle. That could be diverting.

“I do not need _any_ help. Certainly not from—” He stopped. Something had caught his eye. On the south-eastern corner of the wall, at the side of the last guard tower before the limestone cliff removed the need for further defences, there was a shape. A dark mass. The edge of it waved in the breeze.

“What’ve you…?” Kipp breathed, watching his face.

He had felt tired – not physically, but – tired of the slowness of this last stage. The ride to the gallows had been proving very slow, and desolate. Now, that was changing. The pace of the tumbril was gaining speed. He smiled into the darkness. “Get behind me, and be quiet.”

His first notion, that it was Bishop hiding up there, he was able to dismiss after a few more steps. Whatever it was, it had none of the ranger’s control, none of his air of concentrated lethality. In fact, it looked like a large sack of barley wrapped in a cloak.

There was no ban on lights in the bailey. The lamps burning in the windows of the tavern, and in the so-called Startear’s tower, meant that he was peering from brightness up into that corner of the defences where the darkness always seemed at its most intense. The outer ring-wall terminated in another outcrop of limestone some twenty yards south of the shape, so that that particular stretch was isolated. Easy to overlook.

A short way past the last of the tavern’s glow, and he could see what the shape was. A movement above him on his right made him grit his teeth in alarm, but it was only a sentry on patrol.

“What—?” began Kipp.

“Be _quiet_ , boy.” He needed to think. Clearly, he would have to go up onto the wall-walk to inspect the remains. A flight of spiral stairs was housed in the small guard tower. Those, however, ultimately led out through a door which could currently be considered as out of commission. The alternative route went through the Keep itself, up more stairs, then onto the wall-walk about ten yards from his target. Straightforward, except that he didn’t want to return to the main hall yet.

Someone would insist on asking him questions. Inane ones. And the door that led from the Keep to the wall might be covered in traps too.

There was an additional hazard. The limestone crag that the castle had been built into. It was too sheer to be used to advantage by an attacking army, but for a nimble lone bowman, it could be a gift. A flank of the cliff ran parallel to the wall in that section: anyone on the walk would be open to attack from above. To poisoned arrows, say.

He looked at Kipp. No doubt the boy was going to take encouragement from what he was about to do, but there was no regiment of messengers standing by to receive his instructions.

“Go to the seneschal. Tell her there’s a body on the south-eastern wall. Tell her to check the door onto the walls for traps. And that no one should be sent out there unless they’re under a spell of protection, or stoneskin. Don’t neglect a single point.”

Kipp hopped from foot to foot like a much younger boy, any vestige of teenage hauteur overcome by the glory of having an important task to fulfil. To a stable hand, running messages for him apparently represented a step up in life. An error. He would do much better for himself by dancing attendance round Nevalle and his ilk.

“Go.”

He sped away. That left Ammon as close as possible to alone as a man could be in the bailey: thus, not really alone at all. Shadowy Greycloaks still roamed the walls. Anyone could be watching from the jumble of buildings.

There were nooks and crannies about the place that could screen him from any onlookers. But the sudden appearance of a seven-foot horned devil from a builders’ yard could make even the doziest guardsman take note and reach for his sword.

Strange to think he’d once been proud of mastering the shift at a relatively early stage in his studies. More proud, of course, after learning how to transform back with his clothes still _on_.

But increasingly, he’d been feeling an aversion to the mere idea of being observed during the change. What would the likes of the composed Sergeant Draygood think afterwards…join in with the whelpish recruits and start clutching a holy amulet whenever Ammon appeared? Farlong and her crowd didn’t matter so much. They already knew the worst.

Not that it should matter at all. He pulled back his hood. Let the tattoos serve as his passport.

He stepped clear of the tower’s moonshadow, spread his arms, and sped through the words of power. His throat contracted, then warped, then stabilised as he uttered the last few guttural syllables. The ground moved over a foot further away. His legs cracked, and bent forwards.

The transformation complete, the tip of one wing touched the corner of the tavern. The tip of the other was almost at the wall.

“Tyr stand me by, what is that thing?” The whisper was from a sentry standing some thirty feet above him. In this form, he could even hear the man’s pulse. Look into his eyes, and he’d see the soul looking back.

“It’s Ammon Jerro. The warlock, you know. Just leave him to it.” A red outline was looking down at him, the edges blurred like a heat-haze. Since it spoke with Sergeant Bevil’s voice, he assumed that was who it was. It nodded to him, and moved on.

The set of instincts embedded in his changed form said that the Harbourman should die for his impertinence. Ammon ignored their prompting without difficulty. He would not permit his will to be corrupted by the grey flesh and armour of scales that hulled him round.

Instead, he let the massive wings beat the air. He felt more of his strength flow into them, loaning them enough magic to combat the pressing sky. He began to ascend.

He had only intended to fly to the section of wall in advance of Kana and whoever the seneschal brought with her, but it occurred to him that, since he had drawn on his power anyway, he could use it to everyone’s advantage. He rose higher, the need to bespell himself upwards lessening the further he went.

The baatezu part of his mind understood hunting. It raised no arguments as he followed an ascending spiral around the vast spikes of limestone that topped the cliffs behind the Keep. Even the ranger couldn’t conceal himself from these eyes.

A hunched falcon watching him from the highest peak. A raven perching on a dead sapling. A pine marten hunting voles in a crevasse. The insignificant souls of small creatures blazed as raw-red as heated iron.

There was no human there. And no caves deep enough to deceive his senses. Slowly, and with a throb of regret that might be the baatezu’s, or might be his own, he swept down to the wall.

In the first few days of their cooperation, when it was still fragile and vulnerable to complete collapse, Farlong had stopped traducing him long enough to ask what it felt like to fly. Dull, he’d told her truthfully. Muted. A cornugon’s physiology was not such as to make it graceful in the air; its senses did not apprehend flight as pleasure. It was a tool, no more. And he had broken off there, deciding that he would rather keep the information about the form’s other instincts and sensations to himself.

Once on the wall, he paused long enough to scan the cliff-face opposite. Nothing there save insects. A sudden rain of arrows was not going to come from that direction. Not in the immediate future.

A word of release, and he was human again. For a while, his vision guttered, light and shade wavering and crossing. The voice from the depths lingered long enough to hiss that it was a mistake to become a weak, puny thing. Then it left.

He leant on the nearest battlement, and took a few, deep breaths.

The world settled back into familiar patterns, the most familiar one of all being the certainty that he had work to do. Ignoring the pain in all his limbs from their recent forcible remoulding, he followed the wall-walk along to the slumped shape in front of the guard tower.

The Greycloak was still on his feet. Not held there through a necromantic spell; rather, a plain wooden spear, surely the man’s own weapon, had been rammed through his chest, pinning him to the door. One gloved hand rested on the haft. The other hung down at his side, limp and directionless.

There was blood everywhere. Seeping through the plates of his armour, coating his leggings, and pooling at his feet.

An unpleasant fate. The strength it must have taken to ram the spear through the metal…

The door behind him rattled, and burst open. Ammon looked round in time to see the majority of the castle menagerie spill out onto the wall-walk. Get the seneschal, he’d told the boy. Well, she was there, but so was everyone else. Including the damned zerth, and Garius’s tool Torio, nosing around after information as usual, and Nevalle; Sand, Casavir and Jalboun brought up the rear.

The message had been communicated thoroughly and indiscriminately. Each of the eleven people he could see was under some kind of magical protection. Sand’s forcefield alone took up the entire width of the wall.

They surged closer. Ammon drew himself up, blocking their further progress. A habit of resistance. The corpse of the Greycloak needed no guarding. 


	5. Phlegethos

  1. Phlegethos



“Who is it?” The dwarf Khelgar was in the vanguard as usual. Bull-headed and intemperate, but easy to manage within certain boundaries, once one knew his character.

“Is it Bishop?” said the druid, trying to lean around Nevalle to view the body, and instead seeing him, arms folded. “Did you…?”

Kana was attempting to reach the head of the group; her progress was slowed by the narrowness of the footway.

Ammon hesitated. He could order the lot of them back in, but he knew that some of them would refuse to obey on principle. If Zhjaeve and Nevalle stayed, so would the rest, not wanting to be left out.

It would be so much less complex if they were all balor demons. 

Alternatively, he could focus on extracting Kana from the pack. Once here, the dead soldier would become her business. Since it now seemed very likely that Bishop had fled the Keep altogether, his own involvement in the matter could end for tonight. Let the seneschal disperse the ghouls.

Then the choice became irrelevant.

“The hells?” a high-pitched voice called from the side-door into the Keep. “They’re all out here, Lila. No idea why. I blame Khelgar.”

Ammon saw the dwarf grin, before turning to bellow back through the press of bodies. “Treason and murder’s what’s happening, my lass. And you’d better have a bloody good alibi!”

The crowd on the wall stirred, their interest in the death suddenly diverted into a new channel. He too almost forgot the corpse at his back. His pulse certainly didn’t put on a burst of speed; that would be ridiculous.

The tiefling Neeshka was the first to appear; she avoided the bottleneck by the simple expedient of racing along the battlements, her tail swaying behind her with each springing step. She threw herself into an athletic flip, and landed on the last battlement before the tower, where she crouched, scanned the impaled Greycloak, and wrinkled her nose.

“Eeew, nasty!” Her eyes, the pupils of which were bordered with dull red rings, flicked across to him. “You do this?”

“No.”

“Yaaa, thought not, not your style. Also—” The tiefling hopped onto the walkway, and, kneeling down, reached a long arm behind the corpse’s hip. Her hand emerged holding a blastglobe: a glass sphere packed with volatile explosives. The molten glow at its centre must have alerted her to its presence. He would have been angry with himself for failing to notice the trap, except that the approach of a second figure kept consuming his attention.

“Thought I was done with these things,” said Neeshka. “So not thrilled to see another one. Take that, would you?” She handed the globe to Khelgar. “There’s something else...”

She reached back into the shadows under the man’s cloak; her arm tensed, and whatever it was she had gripped came loose.

At the same time, Farlong stepped round him. In contrast to the tiefling’s battlement acrobatics, she had chosen to walk along the inner edge of the wall. Her last stride had briefly left her suspended over a thirty-foot drop. She didn’t stagger as she arrived in front of him, but he put out an arm to steady her regardless.

The fine cloth of her shirt felt damp. The smell of smoke hung around her. Whatever she’d been up to, the Sword was still strapped to her back, the heavy sheathe and fine hilt showing no trace of damage. She ran a hand through her braids, and stared at the body.

“Ammon, can you conjure some light? I can just see silhouettes at the moment.” As he transferred a globe of light from his hands to sit in her palm, she turned to regard their audience. “I don’t think we all need to be out here. Who found the body?”

“Who do you think?” said Qara.

“Jerro – who else?” said Khelgar. “At least he just _found_ it this time.” The dwarf glanced up at him. “No offence meant,” he added gruffly.

The rest of the group began to chime in with questions and comments on the events of the night. Since most of them had only been tangentially involved, if at all, the overall effect was unenlightening. Farlong raised a hand for quiet.

“Ammon, Kana, Neeshka, please stay. The rest of you please go and wait in the war-room. I’ll meet you there as soon as we’re done here. Khelgar, take the blastglobe and put it somewhere safe. Or destroy it. Carefully. Your choice.”

“…stick it up the man’s treacherous sneaking backside is what I’d like to do with it,” the dwarf muttered as he departed.

Most of the crowd went with him. Nevalle seemed to think he should be an exception. Ammon stared at him until he surrendered and trailed after the rest. Casavir too stayed uninvited after escorting the druid as far as the door to the Keep. Glares wouldn’t work on that one.

“Take a look at this,” said Neeshka. The enchanted light that Farlong held cupped against her breast threw enough brightness across the cramped wall-walk to create the illusion of daylight. A knife lay across the tiefling’s open hand. It looked unremarkable to him. Eight-inch blade, smooth and sharp along the cutting edge, hilt bound in fibrous string.

Farlong’s breath hissed through her teeth. “Bishop’s knife. Gods.”

“It was stuck in the door,” the tiefling explained. “Used as a kind of ledge to support the blastglobe. First time anyone tried to move the body, it would have gone up in flames, and anyone near it too.” She clicked her tongue. “Smart. Simple, vicious, and smart. I’ll have to remember that one.”

“Could someone have stolen it?” Farlong asked. “I saw Bishop going home a few nights ago. He could barely walk in a straight line…”

It had escaped his notice that she wouldn’t know about the ranger. He’d been too full of the relief that it would not be necessary to drag her remains from a river and cut her ribcage open to retrieve the last shard of the Sword. The one that he’d caused to lodge there.

Casavir jumped in with a description of the evening’s events before he could do the same. “I fear that burning bridges has a meaning quite other than the one we expected today,” the knight began. “A couple of hours ago, Bishop told Elanee that he was leaving. He made some general threats of revenge, but neither of us expected – this.” He nodded towards the form that still hung pinned against the small guard tower. His black eyebrows contracted.

Ammon was almost amused. The paladin had come as close to lying as was possible without being robbed of his vocation with a roll of thunder, and a flash of divine lightning. It seemed a foolish risk to take. He surely didn’t think Ammon was going to leave the matter there?

Ammon stepped towards him. “What you have failed to mention is that your druid friend neglected to raise the alarm for an hour.” Belatedly, the reason why Casavir had lingered announced itself to him – the man was here to protect his lover.

“No one could have foreseen this,” said Casavir, unmoved.

“No, they could have foreseen much worse. You did, or do you not remember that you imagined Nasher as dead as this soldier is now?”

The knight narrowed his eyes, and opened his mouth ready with a retort. What it might have been was intriguing, since Ammon could see no way for him to extract himself from the maze of empty gallantry he’d thrown himself so willingly into. But Farlong interrupted the dispute.

“That’s enough. Casavir, please go back to the Keep. I’ll talk to you about what happened later.” She sounded tired, and was starting to shiver. Her damp clothes must make her more sensitive to the breeze from the mountains. The temperature of the early autumn night was barely perceptible to him. After Stygia, everything seemed warm.

“As you wish, Captain.” Casavir retreated. If it was a retreat. Ammon was unsure who had won the dispute in the opinion of their arbiter. He was left with the vague feeling that he had made some sort of error, but he wasn’t sure where, or in precisely what respect.

Farlong had turned her back on all of them. “No more traps, right?” she asked the tiefling.

“Hang on.” Neeshka reached for the parapet of the tower, and swung herself up effortlessly, using her tail as an extra limb like an abishai. From her new vantage point, she was able to look down on the corpse. “Nope. All clear.”

“Time to get him down then,” said Farlong.

“Agreed, Captain.” The seneschal had been silent till now. The woman never spoke unless she had something important to communicate, a quality shared by absolutely no one else in Crossroad Keep. Still, it seemed to him that her curt reply was delivered with a look of marked displeasure in his direction.

Farlong reached out a tentative hand, and drew back the hood that had shrouded most of the face. “Damn…that’s Gilvath, isn’t it?” She brushed aside a lock of auburn hair from the smooth forehead.

The corpse had been young, a man in his early twenties though fleshy for his age. He’d been blue-eyed. It would have been easier to look at the face if Bishop had put the eyes out while he was at his work.

“Yes, Captain,” said Kana. “He was on the rota to watch this part of the wall until dawn. He must have just gone on duty when this happened.” Her voice stayed level, but she seemed to be avoiding the sight of the dead young man. He couldn’t blame her for that. Nevertheless, he made himself examine the face again. An element didn’t fit…

“There’s something in the mouth.” That was it. The lips and cheeks were bulging, pushed a little out of shape by some object hidden behind them. Another blastglobe?

“You’re right.” Farlong straightened. “Fucking hell!” She whispered the curse into the night, then made as if to return the magelight to him. “I’ll get it out.”

Ammon shook his head. He brushed past her, and a snatch of warmth infiltrated his surcoat. Human warmth. He could still detect that, despite his sojourn in the Lower Planes. The moment almost compensated for the unpleasantness ahead; a little longer beside her, and he might even have stopped regretting the absence of a minor demon to complete the task in his stead.

“Here – gloves.” Farlong passed him a pair of singed leather gauntlets. “You’ve got long fingers, but – ah – better than nothing.”

It was a sensible precaution. _And a kind one_ , murmured a voice that sounded like his brother’s. To shut it up, he drew the gloves on - they were tight, but not impossibly so – and, refusing to hesitate, tilted the corpse’s head away from him.

The lower jaw dropped when the pulled on the chin. He smelled blood and vomit. Perhaps he should be grateful that he’d found the soldier before rigor mortis set in. A few more hours, and he’d have needed a knife for this. Or a hammer.

There was no reddish glow. Another blast globe was thus out of the question. Farlong raised the magelight above his shoulder, though it was the angle rather than the amount of light that made the business awkward. He thought he was looking at a ball of cloth. A gag?

Bishop could have used it to conceal a second deadly surprise. Given that the three people on the wall with him were some of his most important allies, he should take no unnecessary risks.

Then he decided he was out of patience. Let Bishop do his worst.

He pulled the ball of cloth free. As he’d expected, a slew of dark blood mixed with vomit splashed out. Most of it landed on the parapet.

“Ick,” said the tiefling, safely ensconced on her lofty perch.

He rested his salvage on the surface of one of the clean battlements. Once untangled and laid flat, its nature became immediately apparent. Oblong. Blue, or formerly blue. A white Eye of Tyr in the centre. Nasher’s pious reworking of the Neverwinter flag.

Kana drew nearer to look at it. “Did Bishop have a grudge against Lord Nasher? Against Neverwinter?”

Farlong rubbed her forehead, then stared at the sky, as if waiting to see an answer written there. “No – well, no more than against anywhere. No more than against Gilvath. He hated Luskan, and he hated my uncle.” She paused. “Though he hated Duncan for serving his life…”

“He was always crazy,” the tiefling called down. “Even if he could be fun sometimes, he was still as mad as a manticore.”

Farlong snorted mirthlessly, and shook her head. “It sounds as if we’re delivering the world’s worst eulogy, but it’s not him that’s dead.”

“That can be corrected…” Ammon met her eyes. She frowned. In fact, he wasn’t sure that he could undertake anything against the ranger. The man was out of his reach, at present. If he was fool enough to return, it would be the worse for him.

“No one’s going to go haring after Bishop now. I need everyone here.” She broke the eye contact abruptly. “Let’s free Gilvath. Kana, would you find a couple of Greycloaks with a stretcher to carry him to the temple. In case there’s something Ivarr can do.”

“You reckon—” said Neeshka.

“No,” Farlong replied. “But I expect Ivarr will try. And – Kana – someone to clean up the mess on the wall would be good too. But not Kipp.”

Kana saluted, and walked briskly back to the Keep. Farlong was rolling up her damp sleeves before the seneschal had reached the door.

They finished the task in silence. Farlong passed the magelight to him; he let more of his power flow into it, and left it in an empty torch bracket. He bent, and wrapped the corpse’s loosely hanging arm around his shoulder. Braced himself in preparation for the extra weight. Nodded to Farlong.

She returned the nod, then, stooping, gripped the spearhaft. The steel armband imbued with strength shone on her dark skin. In a single firm movement, like a farmer cracking the neck of a hen, she snapped the haft in two, and pulled the killing end free.

It rattled against the edges of the armour. The last sound heard by millions of soldiers across history, though by convention on the battlefield, and not on sentry duty before the enemy even reached the gates.

There was no second flow of blood.

The former Greycloak had been taller than him, and heavier, but he’d been ready for that. He didn’t stagger; after re-establishing his balance, he was able to half-drag, half-lift the corpse clear of the tower door, and lay it down along the wall-walk. The frozen horror of the blue eyes was still unsettling, but at least the body was no longer slumped forward like a puppet with its strings cut. That sight had threatened to open the path to more than one memory best left in obscurity.

“Thank you,” said Farlong.

“It needed to be done,” he replied. Though not necessarily by either of them. But he could not object to it; his brother would have done the same for one of his soldiers.

He pulled off the gloves, depositing them near the soiled flag, and returned to stand near Farlong. She seemed lost in thought.

Two Greycloaks with a stretcher soon arrived, followed by another with a mop and pail of water. The remains of Gilvath were hurried away, covered by a rough blanket of undyed wool. After a few minutes, the only sign of what had happened was the hole in the heavy wood of the tower door.

Still, Farlong stayed where she was, her wide, expressive mouth set in a thin line. Ammon stayed too: there was no profit in waiting in the war-room when the principal source of news was here beside him, albeit uncharacteristically silent.

The tiefling had retrieved the magelight from the bracket, and was prancing around the tower top, batting the light hither and thither like a cat with a ball of string. He had never decided to his satisfaction from which of the infernal races she was descended. Her current range of behaviours were staking a claim for the feline rakshashas…

He snapped his fingers. Purely for show, of course. The magelight winked out instantly.

As Neeshka yowled in disappointment, deep night dropped over them. He let the darkness lie thick on the wall for the count of ten, then snapped his fingers again. Lines of pale golden light wove themselves into a sphere between his hands. When it was ready, he offered it to Farlong. This time, there was a warming spell embedded in it.

Her solemnity receded; with a flash of a grin in his direction, she accepted the light, and let it rotate on the point of her index finger. He watched her carefully. It was important to remember that she smiled at everyone; smiling was her weapon of first resort. It did not mean anything.

There was a patch of burned skin high on her cheek. Did she know? Burns scarred quickly if not healed in good time; he’d learned that battling in the Mere twenty-seven years ago, or five years, depending on how he reckoned it.

“You haven’t asked about the bridges yet,” she said.

“You and your troop destroyed them all. At the final one you met an advance force of the enemy. Not so small as to be insignificant, but not their full strength either. You held them back while the tiefling readied the last case of explosives. She lit the fuse, and you escaped into the river.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Well, that explains it. You seem to know what happened already.” He couldn’t tell if her tone was admiring or ironic. The latter was more likely. “How did you find out?”

“By following the evidence. It was obvious enough.”

Farlong glanced down at her clothes, and gave a short laugh. There was a gash in the side of her hose, and the hem of her shirt was black instead of white. “I see what you mean.” She looked across to the side-door into the Keep. “They’re waiting. We should –”

“Ach, they’ll all be stuffing their faces,” the tiefling called down to them, before executing another full-body flip on the spot. “Khelgar always sends for stacks of food from the kitchens before he commits himself to a long meeting.”

“This meeting will be short,” said Farlong, leaving his side to go and stand below the tower. “We’re done with preparations and riding out for this reason or that.”

“Yeeeah,” drawled the tiefling, not convinced. “But you know Nevalle’s going to want to make a speech, and Sand’ll get in loads of words edgeways, then Torio will start in on Elanee, and Casavir will end up trying to find a polite way to say ‘Go to hell, you Luskan witch…’”

“Granted,” said Farlong. “Are you coming?”

Neeshka cartwheeled into a handstand. She seemed to have been struck by sudden deafness

There was no particular need for him to wait for the tiefling to be coaxed down from her roof-top den. Nevertheless, he waited.

“So, Casavir.” Neeshka gave an upside-down grin. Her tail wrapped itself around her legs, the end twitching fitfully. “You know, I used to think he was only a tiny bit better than the Helmites. But then he gets all human and nice. I wish someone would lie for me like that.” She sighed over-dramatically. “ _So_ romantic, don’t you think?”

“No very useful though,” Farlong remarked, and took one stride back, raising the light to better see the tiefling’s face. Mischief danced in every corner of it. “He just made himself and Elanee look suspicious. He could have let her speak for herself, and avoided the problem entirely.”

Neeshka smirked. Her eyes flickered towards him. He had been about to go; the look changed his mind. “Nah, you’ve got it the wrong way round. Ammon there made them look suspicious. He hasn’t ever liked a real person enough to lie for them, being so practical and all.”

Farlong turned briefly to look at him; her expression was closed. Perhaps he should be grateful that she wasn’t joining the tiefling in mocking him. If that was what was happening.

“Casavir didn’t lie,” Farlong said. “He just…told a stripped-down version of the truth.”

The tiefling cackled wildly; her shoulders shook so hard with amusement that they unbalanced her, and after teetering around the roof for a few more circuits, she rolled down and lay flat, her head sticking out over the wall-walk, like someone brought to the execution block. Though the condemned rarely grinned so widely. Not while they were alive and fleshed.

“The truth! That’s good. Well, I can tell you that the truth is the only thing Casavir will be stripping down any time soon. He could have Elanee for the asking, but the trouble is, he doesn’t ask.”

The shadow army was advancing, a former ally had run mad and killed a soldier, and a final reckoning loomed over them, and all the tiefling could think to do was spy on the love-lives of her acquaintances. Unbelievable. Yet he remembered how, a long time ago, he’d watched and listened on the edges of groups of not-strangers in Neverwinter taverns, eager to know more than anyone else in the city, subject be damned. And in the back of his mind, he wondered…so, the knight and the druid _aren’t_ sleeping together?

If he listened to this nonsense much longer, the banality would prove infectious.

Farlong stared straight up at Neeshka, as the tiefling continued. “‘Course, that’s the problem with a lot of men in this Keep. They don’t ask.”

“As long as they don’t go insane and start murdering my soldiers, they can do what they like.” There was irritation in her voice, and he recognised her exasperated body language. It had often been directed at him.

Deaf by choice again, Neeshka paid her friend no heed. “…But maybe if Elanee took the lead herself…” she tapped her lip. “She’s pretty bossy when she wants to be, even if she gives herself out as this meek little tree worshipper half the time.”

Farlong threw up her hands, and backed away. “Are you completely safe up there? I’d hate it if you fell and _cut your head open on a sharpened paving-stone._ ” In her burst of temper, West Harbour surfaced in the vowels of every other word. He liked that; people around Highcliff had sounded similar when he was a boy.

“Nah, I’m fine thanks. I’ll pass on the meeting, Lila. Blowing up bridges is hard work for a growing tiefling.” She jumped to her feet, stretched, and yawned. “Remember you’re not to sign anything!” she instructed in parting, before disappearing off the further side of the tower.

Farlong walked back along the wall in silence. He wanted to ask her what her friend had been babbling about; then he changed his mind. He would figure out the answer himself, or not at all.

At the door, he stood aside to let her precede him. She didn’t look up to him as she passed; her shoulders were rolled forward, almost hunched, as if expecting a blow. From him? Hardly. They hadn’t had a serious argument for months. In any case, in their last…vehement…difference of opinion, _she_ had thrown a vase at _him_. Tragedy inverted becoming farce.

The brightly-lit corridor rendered the magelight unnecessary. He permitted it to fade. They were almost at the door of the war-room when she spoke.

“Bevil won’t take it well. He was the duty sergeant when it happened.” So she wasn’t going to talk about whatever the tiefling had been up to either? Well, she could do as she liked. It would be something trivial, in any case.

“Your Harbourman friend will have enough to keep him occupied soon. Nor could he have stopped Bishop. He would have been outmatched, and killed.”

That was true, more than likely. What concerned him was that the out-of-the-way corner of the defences had been left with only a single guard. There was a point-of-access there directly into the Keep. He should have noticed the risk. Or if not him then the seneschal, or Farlong, or Casavir…any one among the castle’s residents could occasionally be counted on to look away from their golems, books of tree pictures, political careers, and romances long enough to notice the deaths that were waiting for them patiently at each window and door.

“I will join the sentries tonight,” he said. She paused at the doorway, and tilted her head. “After your meeting. I do not anticipate another attack, or incursion…not at once. But if one comes, the soldiers will need someone who can do more than hold a sword and shield.”

Her eyes were dark, a deep grey like weathered rock. They observed him coolly. “I suppose if I tell you to go and rest instead, you’ll just say I should mind my own business.”

He repressed a smile. “Then don’t try.”

The pause afterwards stretched on too long. Voices beyond the door surged. He could hear Khelgar laughing.

“Wake me at dawn then,” she said finally. “You can’t keep all the joy of sentry duty to yourself.”

“At your command, Captain.”

“Yeah, right. That’ll be the day!” The mock exasperation turned into a fleeting smile, and then that too changed, flattened into something hesitant, embarrassed. “Sorry about Neeshka. She’s obsessed with this vaguely clandestine sweepstake she’s been running. It’s all she talks about.”

He frowned. “She can waste her free time as she wishes, as long as she retains her skills.” Some details of the sweepstake were familiar to him already, since the tiefling had been pestering him about it since winter. It had taxed his resolve not to pay her to go away.

“I have a hundred coin riding on Grobnar’s construct killing the King of Shadows.” He stared at her. She shrugged expansively with her shoulders and arms. “She wouldn’t let me bet on myself, naturally. Or I would’ve bet a _lot_ more than a hundred.” The corners of her eyes creased in amusement.

“I pay no attention to the tiefling.” He wasn’t sure what he was defending himself against. The sense that it would be wise to close down the subject had become very strong. Stronger even than the follow-up thought: I pay no attention to her because _you_ have taken all the attention I can spare.

The traces of amusement round her eyes disappeared. “That’s a sensible choice. I wish I could do the same.”


	6. Malboge

  1. Malbolge



Black turned to charcoal, and charcoal to wolf-grey as the night sputtered out. A low mist floated over the bailey. Clumps of straw had poked through it in places, but with the advance of dawn, the mist had grown deeper instead of dispersing. He felt as if he was looking down from the walls onto a rising pool of treacherous water.

Behind everything, the Keep loomed up, massive and solid. The Greycloaks patrolling its rooftop perimeter were like ants on the frozen tomb of Levistus. Yet for all it seemed unassailable, it would fall like everywhere else when the shadows came for it. In a few days, or a ten-day, or a month… Its fortifications and defenders could not hold back the threat forever, any more than the walls of Ascarle had kept the city safe when the sluice-gates were opened through treason, and the ocean roared in over all.

While the sentries had been occupied watching the fields, Ammon had spent the night since the meeting concluded with his eyes on the inner walls, the bailey and its clutter of buildings and equipment, and on the Keep itself.

Now that his hours of guard duty were drawing to an end, the last – two days? – without sleep were gaining on him. His eyes hurt. His hands felt sore as his power held ready and unspent sparked along the lines in his palms. When he rubbed his beard, it was damp with condensation from the fog-thick air.

“Next shift’s coming on duty,” said Bevil, as the sergeant walked past on what had to be the last of his rounds. He knew that in reality he hadn’t spent the majority of the night fending off attempts at small-talk from the persistent Harbourman; it only felt as if he had.

“Clearly.” Greycloaks were filing into the bailey in ones and twos, tying their cloaks and pulling on their helmets.

“How long do we have, do you think?” The sergeant’s round, earnest face had a greyish cast to it today that wasn’t merely the creation of the tentative sunlight. Hard to believe this was the brother of the ogrish Lorne who had tried to intimidate him when he was caged in Luskan, and then had run squawking from Koraboros in a melee on the border.

But Ammon had been very different from both of his brothers. The same set of ingredients could produce poisons, or explosives, or potions of healing depending on the preparation. As in alchemy, so in families.

“Impossible to say. A few hours. A few days. Garius has less intelligence than most chickens, but some few of his surviving lieutenants will have enough wit between them to arrange transport over the river for his army.”

Bevil swallowed. “And the castle will hold?”

“No.”

“Oh. That’s…uh…not what I was hoping to hear.” The seneschal had appeared by the gate. As soon as her presence was recognised, the day watch hurried to form a double line in front of her.

Bevil was looking greyer than ever. How much was it safe to tell him? The planned counter-attack was not a formal secret: still, the fewer people aware of it, the more secure the preparations were. And hadn’t this peasant soldier already broken once under the knives of the duergar? According to the ubiquitous Kipp he had, and it was an unlikely sort of story to invent.

“So you think we’re staying to be killed?” the sergeant persisted. Ammon pressed his lips together; the survivors of West Harbour all seemed to suffer from irresistible compulsion to follow him around and get in his way at every turn. It felt like that, at least. At times.

“For my part,” he replied, and let his hand rest on the pommel of his falchion, “I am here to fight. And win.”

Bevil smiled weakly. “Lila said you were brave.”

Ammon stayed very still. He certainly wasn’t going to ask the sergeant to tell him more about that conversation. Bevil might be trying to flatter him, except that he doubted the man had the brains for it…or anything to gain.

“It’s strategy. Not bravery.” He scowled at Bevil fiercely enough to make him take a step back. “That is all you need to know.”

The night sentries were stretching, smiling, some waving to the day watch below them, a few shouting down chaffing remarks. Time to leave the walls. Wherever the enemy might be now, they weren’t going to begin the assault in broad daylight.

After a few strides, he hesitated, and turned back to where Bevil still lingered. “What happened to the Greycloak last night was not your fault. Bishop killed him, not you.”

A nervous tic manifested itself, though rather than confining itself to the corner of a cheek, this shook the whole of the young man’s face. “No. But I didn’t stop Bishop. I didn’t notice him pinning Gilvath to the damned door.” His jaw tightened, and he looked away.

Ammon departed the walls, and quickly crossed the bailey, angry with himself for trying to be other than what he was. Let the sergeant wallow in guilt if he wanted. Much good it would do him.

He stalked through the Keep’s main hall, avoiding groups of Greycloaks, lizard-folk, and dwarves busy on errands of their own. As he approached the door of the Knight-Captain’s bedroom, the female guard saw him, and knocked.

“Who is it?” Farlong called through the wood. He thus only needed to report on the uneventful night and leave; the task of waking her was clearly unnecessary.

“No one on the list, Captain.”

“Thank the gods. Send them in then.” The guard smiled to herself, and held the door open for him.

A ten-day had passed since he’d last had reason to visit Farlong’s chamber. The desk was in as much disarray as ever. Jars of magelight were perched haphazardly on stacks of parchment. The bed dominated the room. Although it had enough space for five or six dopplegangers of Farlong, the blankets had been thrown back, and the bed was empty, save for the sheathed Sword of Gith lying in the centre of the mattress.

He took half a step towards it. By the nine hells, he hated the thing, even if his hatred sometimes lay very near to love.

“Ah, it’s you.” Farlong was standing at the wardrobe in hose and a long shirt, examining the back of a light leather jerkin with narrowed eyes. Whatever she was looking for eluded her; she tossed it onto a chair, and began to rummage in the wardrobe for something else. “Anything happen on the walls?”

“Nothing.”

She emerged from the wardrobe holding a heavier set of leathers. “Well, that’s good. A few more nights of nothing, and the Keep may never even have to be tested.”

“If Aldanon doesn’t delay matters further. His lack of focus could doom the whole undertaking.”

“I’ll speak to him.” She began pulling on the hardened leather brigandine. Speaking to the scholar could make him worse. It could offer him new ideas for procrastination and idle tangents to bumble down. She must have read the scepticism on his face. “And I’ll ask Sand to go and offer his assistance. He can help Harcourt manage him.”

That would have to suffice. Whether Sand could have any affect on Aldanon remained to be seen. For all their sakes, he hoped the mage knew some means of controlling the scholar that had escaped him.

As Farlong disappeared back into the wardrobe, he crossed the floor to stand near the desk. A repaired black vase occupied the shelf next to it; fire-toned mortar held the pieces together. As he trailed a finger down the curve of its neck and side, he glanced across the piles of paper.

On top of the one nearest the chair, which presumably contained everything urgent or recent, a scrawled note had been dropped, each individual character written separately and with emphasis: _STOP READING MY LETTERS, AMMON._

When he turned, it was in time to see the last second of Farlong’s grin as she stooped to pull her boots on.

“How did the mood seem among the soldiers?” she asked, serious again.

He walked across to the room’s single, narrow window before answering. “Unaffected by last night’s events, if that’s what you mean. Though I doubt even the dimmest of them would be so foolish as to discuss desertion in my hearing.”

“True. Perhaps with a few of the newer recruits excepted.”

His field of view was limited, but just then he saw a Greycloak cross the bailey and trip on the end of his spear, which he was also holding upside-down for some unguessable reason; the man would have fallen had a comrade not caught him and propelled him onward. He could grant her those exceptions.

“Who’s on the list your door guard mentioned?” he asked. An idle question. What games she played with her subordinates were up to her, as long as they didn’t interfere with the campaign.

“Mainly Sir Nevalle. Alys is under orders to say that I’m fast asleep and not to be disturbed if he shows up. Or suffering from an infectious disease.” He scrutinised the visible portion of the bailey, and didn’t smile, but harboured the thought of one.

Footsteps padded around the room. The thin soles of her calf-skin boots made hardly any noise on the stone tiles. It was the smell of the sweet oil she rubbed in her hair more than sound that alerted him to her proximity. He kept his gaze on the walls and gatehouse.

The long watch last night would have given him much time for reflection had he permitted it. But planning the routes of the sentries, running through different battle scenarios, and considering what the loss of Bishop would mean for their tactics in the Merdelain kept that danger at bay.

Yet, briefly, after moonset, he had been ambushed by the knowledge of what the tiefling had actually been talking about, under the pretence of holding forth on the knight and the druid. If Bishop had strolled through the gates at that moment, he wasn’t sure he’d have noticed or cared. But even if his interpretation was correct, it didn’t change the situation.

Farlong was at the centre of every line of attack and defence in the war. Whatever happened, they would need to work together as well as – if not better – than they ever had in the last year. And aside from that…he did not enjoy the thought of being mistaken, of making a fool of himself and becoming the object of her taunts, or worse, her pity.

He hazarded a glance to his left. She was three feet away from him. “I’ve been thinking about what Neeshka was saying last night. About Casavir and Elanee.”

He had folded his hands behind his back. They closed into fists involuntarily. As far as he knew, mind-reading was not one of the abilities she’d picked up jackdaw-like in the course of her chaotic rise to prominence.

“What about it?” His voice sounded rougher than usual. As if in response, clearer than before, he heard the warm tones of his brother, like a soft laugh beside his ear. _I have been dead for more than fifty years, I never had any interest in women, and I exist now only as a dream…and I would still be better at this than you._

Farlong hesitated. Perhaps he had discouraged her from continuing? But now he wanted to know what she had been going to say.

“Well?” he prompted. He turned, and scanned her face. The burn on her cheek had been healed, leaving no scarring. A heaviness to her eyelids suggested insufficient sleep. Last month she’d said that she still dreamed about the long and bloody rite that had created the Illefarn Guardian. Had that haunted her dreams again while he was watching on the walls?

She shifted almost imperceptibly. Her movements had become so much more controlled; even her moments of flamboyance seemed carefully rationed.

“Neeshka sounded genuinely impressed with Casavir. And I didn’t reckon her explanation added up. She can lie herself fit to trick a sphinx, and she’s worked with professional liars in the past. But then I realised why Casavir surprised her so much when he tried to protect Elanee.”

“Enlighten me.” They were of a height, which meant that he could see very well how her eyes glinted in annoyance. She rolled her shoulders, and stretched her arms before saying more.

“Trust. Elanee was alone in her bedroom with a good-looking man asking her to run away with him. And then she let him escape. And Casavir still had complete trust in her. It’s astonishing, when I think about it.”

“Astonishing naivety on his part,” he retorted. He hadn’t thought she’d liked knight so much. “That trust you find so admirable will prove to be a knife at his throat before the season’s end.”

Farlong’s mouth curled into something that was not a smile. “Sometimes I think I’d rather trust like that, and bear the risk of the knife.”

The conversation had veered in an unexpected direction. ‘Then you’re more of a fool than I thought you were’ was ready to snap from his lips in rebuke; he stopped himself in time. She wasn’t talking about Casavir.

“Speak to the zerth if you want an encomium on immaterialities. Trust. Belief. My concern is with the world as I apprehend it.” He folded his arms. Farlong kept hers by her sides, though he noticed that both her hands were clenched. “You trusted Bishop. Look in what coin he repaid you. One of your men dead, his body displayed like a wolf-pelt nailed on a farm gate.”

Farlong averted her face, and exhaled. Then she met his gaze again. Not frowning, not hostile, perfectly cool. Only the hands showed that anything was amiss. “Bishop would say that I trusted too little.” She held up a finger before he could cut in with an objection. “I trusted you. I still trust you. Is that wrong?”

He did not reply. A few braids were hanging loose by her right cheek. He knew that he’d like to reach out and brush them behind her ear for the sake of creating symmetry, and he also knew that he wasn’t going to do that.

“I’ve got to go.” She walked round the bed in quick, stiff strides, and retrieved the Sword from its resting place. “Sentry duty calls.”

“Lila.”

“Yes?” She stopped. Her voice was low.

“Wear the torque. Never be without it now. It has the kind of power that can decide the outcome of a battle. Or a life.”

She nodded, face closed like the windows of the abandoned houses to the south, and collected the unassuming steel band from the desk. Her watched her go; the door was opened for her, and the long, light-footed figure receded down the corridor. He didn’t need the voice of his dead brother explaining things to know that the conversation had not gone well.

Since she’d left him here, he supposed he could scan through her recent correspondence. Memoranda from Nevalle with Nasher’s initials looped at the bottom in a shaky hand, concise reports from Kana about the state of the garrison and the Keep, notes from Farlong’s adoptive uncle with news from Neverwinter.

He lacked the patience for the task today. With the end so rapidly approaching, he could gain no useful knowledge from the documents in any case. It was too late for all that.


	7. Minauros

  1. Minauros



He felt no more rested than he had that morning as he fitted the shoulder guard over his armour.

First, there had been the persistent thoughts of Farlong, the look in her eyes when he’d turned to face her, and seen her standing between him and the bed. The smell of her mixing with the sweet oil. And so he’d dealt with that problem, and slept, but woken a few hours later shaking and feverish, and with blood under his nails. His own, drawn from his palms.

There’d been the usual parade of horrors, of course. But in the midst of that there was something else. He’d been trying to sleep on the plains of Avernus – and the absurdity of that concept alone should have been sufficient to warn him that he was dreaming – but his bodyguard in that place had the looks and voice of the first man he’d ever killed. Carolo, a Greycloak officer. A young man, viewed in retrospect, though not as young as he himself had been. Every time he’d fallen asleep in his dream, the dead man had shaken him awake. ‘The reveille’s sounding,’ he’d hissed insistently. It wasn’t.

On balance, he preferred the horrors. That other nightmare didn’t seem fair. It felt as if by satisfying his body’s need for sexual release, he’d shown his mind a weakness, inviting exploitation.

The bedroom he’d been allotted over a year ago was in reality a turret chamber; glazed narrow windows faced north, south, east and west. An enchantment ensured that while he could see out of them, no one could look in. He kept the room sparsely furnished; his one addition was a heavy chest containing the few possessions he had that were too important or dangerous to store in the basement.

Outside, the daylight was growing weaker as the sun began its slow fall into the west. But they were not yet in the hours of greatest jeopardy, when the clouds turned orange and black, and etiolated shadows followed close on the heels of each living being.

He washed his face again in the ewer, though he’d already done that after waking. A bottle of a bitter fermented drink imported from the far west stood alone on an empty table in the corner. He poured himself a cup of it, and drank it in one go to avoid as much of the flavour as possible. It was foul stuff, but afterwards he at least felt able to decide how to spend the couple of hours or so before the guard changed.

The library, he supposed, had to be his priority. If there’d been progress since last night, all to the good. If not, he was going to stay there until Aldanon or the secretary or Sand set out exactly what their difficulties with the spell were. His own grasp of portal magics was incomplete, and focused on travel between the planes, not across the Prime. But he was sure he could engineer a solution while the overly nice trio were still discussing the whys and wherefores.

After choking down another cup of the dubious mud-coloured brew, he buckled on his war-belt and falchion, his wrist guard, and fixed the large leather manica to his right arm. A finely-worked collar of steel lined with felt was the last of his preparations: he’d claimed it for himself from the corpse of a githyanki chieftain.

Before leaving his tower chamber, he checked the wards on the chest, and the runes of protection he’d carved into the doorframe. It was more from habit than genuine caution; he wouldn’t need this room much longer.

The corridors and staircases were quieter than they had been at dawn. A few Greycloaks watched key positions, and stared fixedly ahead as he went past. Come sunset, there’d be another flood of activity – the augmented garrison hurrying in multiple directions en route to food, or sentry duty, or drill, or bed. He’d become used to the pattern of existence here.

But tonight there would be no trumpet calls: no Make Camp that evening, and no Reveille at dawn. The next time the trumpets sounded, by order of the seneschal, it would be with the ancient warning Enemy Sighted.

Two floors above the level of the library, he turned a corner and came to a dead stop. He had expected to see no one except perhaps a single lookout by the southern cross-window.

What he encountered instead were six tall guardsmen in the armour and colours of Castle Never; on the opposite side of the passage, Sir Nevalle was standing next to Nasher’s personal physician, a solemn elf, who was holding the handles of a chair. Small wheels were attached to the ends of each of the chair’s legs. The last figure was bent, and, despite having a cane in one hand, was still leaning heavily against the window’s ornate stone frame.

The guards, Nevalle, and the physician turned as one to stare at him. Nevalle put a hand on his sword-hilt. Seeing that, the six guards shifted their grips on their halberds, and tensed. Then the man at the window looked over his shoulder, narrowed his eyes, and hobbled around.

After twenty-six years, Ammon found himself face-to-face with Nasher Alagondar. When they’d last spoken – _shouted_ , his memory glossed – Nasher had been an imposing youth with large quantities of blonde hair, a booming voice, and a pretentious style of speech that he’d apparently copied from the Tyrrans.

To see him so reduced, so grey and frail and haggard, was a shock. If felt like revenge, and it felt like dislocation. He was living at the end of an age, after witnessing its beginning: the centre was simply gone.

But today he had no business with Nasher. Let him count pigeons through the window, or whatever he was doing. The war could be fought without the invalided dictator.

Ammon made for the door to the stairs that would bring him out near the library. He was careful to walk slowly, his hands in full view at his sides. Nevalle was too attached to accounts, trade agreements and abaci to be prone to attacking impetuously; the guards were unknowns.

He was almost free of the skeleton court, when a familiar voice brought him to a halt once more. It at least had altered little.

“By all the gods. Ammon Jerro.”

It had been unrealistic to expect the man to let the past lie for a little while longer. Nasher had never been able to forgo the chance to look down his nose at the less morally enlightened.

“I knew you were here,” he continued, “but knowing is one thing, and seeing is another.”

“Nasher.” Ammon almost called him ‘my Lord’ in a reversion to the habits formed during his employment at court. “I have pressing business to attend to.” In short, fighting the war the Nasher had bungled. Repeatedly.

Alas, the man shared the tiefling’s gift for selective hearing.

“You have barely changed in all these years. And yet – Aribeth always suspected there was something not quite right about you. Something that went deeper than scholarly detachment.” Ammon knew he should go. He should not be drawn into an exchange that could leave the state without structure, and Nasher without even the little life he still commanded. “I thought she meant your connection to the old oligarchy. But it was not that which she was sensing, after all. The thought that a warlock was hiding in the palace in plain sight…”

Well, he had tried. He let go of the bar on the door, and twisted round. “You seem to have filled de Tylmarande’s place in your retinue without difficulty.” He eyed Nevalle. The chief of the Neverwinter Nine was looking between his master and Ammon with his jaw tense and his lips pressed tight. Good, the ingrate _should_ be scared. “Though so many of your liegemen have abandoned you of late. Perhaps they asked themselves who has been hiding in plain sight on the throne of Neverwinter. A priest-king? Or a charlatan?”

Nasher stepped away from the wall. The move forced the man to transfer more weight to his cane, and he swayed as he did so, seeming ready to fall. But he didn’t. And when Nevalle and the physician tried to prop him up, he shooed them away.

“It is true that I have lost too many loyal servants and _friends_.” Wheezes interspersed the words, but did not lessen the voice’s sonorous quality. “Callum. Hawkes. Melia. Poor Hawkes was torn apart. And Melia – half her beautiful face was burnt to charcoal. Both were murdered. Victims of the worst kind of magics.”

He was sorry about the woman. He had no obligation to regret Nial Hawkes, and Nasher knew exactly why that was. “They each died on their feet with a sword in their hand.”

“A simple sword could be no defence against demons and black fire from the pit.” Nasher’s blue eyes seemed ready to emit a cold fire of their own. Seeing the man stagger had calmed his anger. But not assuaged it.

“You lost a knight, and an old assassin. I have lost everything in this war. Attack me if you want, but when the pyres are lit again, watch the flames, and remember that I warned you decades ago, and you laughed at my warning.” Encouraged to scoff by his mixed court of old blood and new enforcers. All dead now, except for the princeling himself…and the derided messenger.

“Many Greycloaks laid down their lives in that first conflict,” Nasher objected.

“As I recall, they didn’t ‘lay down their lives’. They dropped were they stood – they were massacred – and far too late to be of any use.”

Nasher had put both hands on his cane. His arms were trembling with the effort of holding himself up. A poisoned arrow in the shoulder was the report. It must have been an uncommonly potent venom; it was too much to hope that the enemy’s entire supply had been applied to that one arrowhead.

His Lordship wasn’t finished, of course. He could be persistent, most often when there was no need to be.

“One day, you may understand that life and death are not numbers to be totted up in an account book. You cannot evade justice by adding a few extra figures to the credit side.”

If Nasher hadn’t been weakened by his injury, he might have realised he should avoid financial metaphors. Or not. The young man Ammon had known was just about bright enough to doubt his own legend. After decades surrounded by flatterers, this frail stranger might believe in it.

“Your hypocrisy astounds me….though I suppose I should have learned to expect it by now. Keep your justice. I know exactly how much Brennick and Dalren paid you for it.”

Finally, Nasher deigned to permit Nevalle to support him. “It is not my justice that you have to fear.”

Ammon felt his lips draw back in a reflexive sneer. “Tyr can send his zealots out to pursue me as he wishes. Or strike me down himself if he dares. The Still Lord has a prior claim on me. When my end comes, I would not be surprised to wake in the Hells, and find you in the cell next to mine.”

“This man’s arrogance is boundless, my Lord. Let me—”

He never found out what Nevalle was going to suggest. Footsteps pelted down the northern staircase. He thought he recognised the owner by the rhythm and sound, even before Kipp turned the corner and came to a sharp halt. Bent over and panting for breath, he looked almost as stricken as Nasher. Ammon suspected adolescent theatrics.

“What is it, lad?” Nasher asked. The distraction gave the physician the opportunity to bring the chair round. Grey-faced, the Lord of Neverwinter slumped into it.

The sight of the palace guards took the boy aback. He furrowed his brow at them, and didn’t answer the question. His expression cleared when he saw Ammon.

“You’ve got to come,” he gasped. “There’s—” he stopped, and looked at the guards, knight, healer, and prince. “Are they okay? Can I trust them?” he whispered. Since the boy’s voice was breaking, and he was still learning to control its volume, the whisper must have been heard by everyone there.

“No,” said Ammon. “Now talk. What is it?”

Kipp frowned at his audience before straightening his shoulders like a Greycloak about to make a report. “It’s like this, see,” he began, which was how many in the actual garrison began their reports, but was alien to the prescriptions of training manuals, “I was up on the north tower, and I looked out and there’s this bit of wood over the wall there – just a handful of little trees—”

“I know it. Well?”

“—and I saw a wolf resting on its hunkers in the middle. Spotted it when its tail flicked.” The boy paused, as if what he’d said was full of profound import. Then Ammon realised that it was. A wolf hiding alone by the castle of its own volition? No.

“A wolf?” said Nevalle, and gave a relieved laugh. “I think we can deal with one of them.”

Ammon stared at the knight, who stopped talking. “Did you recognise it?”

The boy swallowed. “It was hard to see, but I reckon one ear was mangled, like it had come out worse in a fight. And the fur on one side was sandy. Not grey.”

“If you’re wasting my time—”

“I’m not, I swear!” The boy opened his eyes wide in a clumsy attempt to appear sincere. At some point, someone – not him – would have to explain that this expression had the opposite of its intended effect. “What should I do?”

“Nothing. I’ll look for the beast myself.” If the news had been less ominous, he’d have been glad of the interruption. It offered a means to retreat from Nasher and his flunkeys without backing down. “You should take him to a stronger position,” he told Nevalle. “There are too many points of ingress here. Get him to a secure room, and bar the door.”

It hadn’t been his intention to humiliate Nasher; nevertheless, when the man ground his teeth and gripped the arms of his chair as if he wanted to throw himself out of it, Ammon was less than sorry.

“And why in Tyr’s name should we do that?” It was one of the few times that Nevalle had addressed him directly in the month since Farlong had presented them to each other with ironic hyper-formality.

“Because Bishop’s wolf has been sighted near the castle. That wolf has always been the harbinger of the man himself.” He glanced once more at Nasher, still fuming in his infirmity. “But keep him here as you see fit. The ranger once said he only hunted healthy prey.”

The boy was waiting for him at the junction in the passage. Having him available as a messenger might prove useful, as it had the previous night, so he did not attempt to order him to remain on the second floor. Kipp ran, and Ammon strode after him.

The route to the top of the north tower was long, and gave him the time to speculate on whether the boy and the ranger were in league. Was he following the stable-hand into a trap? That seemed unlikely. Bishop would not choose Ammon as his first target: too much risk and limited gains if it worked. And little pleasure to be got in killing someone already dead in the books of law.

The final staircase to the tower’s pinnacle spiralled up and up. Lanterns had been set in the walls at ten-foot intervals: the air around each one smelled of stale fat, and the light they cast wavered uneasily over the unplastered masonry. The sound of the boy’s footsteps ceased. Flexing the fingers of his left hand, he continued until he could feel the breeze flowing down from the final door.

Then he paused, listening. Brushed the stonework. He could sense only the boy’s presence. Not a trap then.

Kipp reappeared, silhouetted against the greyish light of the doorway.

“It’s still there!” He sounded like a naturalist who’d discovered a phoenix nesting by his bedroom window, rather than a wolf that would eat his entrails at a word from its master.

“Good.”

During some peaceful interlude in the long history of Crossroad Keep, an aristocratic occupier from the Veirs clan had roofed over its many turrets and tower tops. The north tower had been no exception, until a fortunate lightning strike had blasted away half the tiles, rendering it a serviceable lookout post once more. He supposed it was too late now to send Greycloaks with sledgehammers round the other towers to finish the work the lightning had left incomplete.

Kipp stood at the largest gap, and pointed eagerly towards the copse of trees. The wolf was immediately obvious, despite the fading light and the camouflage provided by its fur. The creature’s focus, its latent physical power and mental watchfulness, carried his attention towards its location. It was lying as still as death, but it was not dead, and not asleep. Only…waiting.

While the wolf skulked out there, it was no threat. Of course, it would need to be monitored; knowing where the wolf was meant he was close to knowing where the ranger might lurk. Even better, it could be caught, and used as bait. If Bishop was so foolish as to seek to rescue it, he could be eliminated before he did any more damage. He cared for the animal as he did for no human, Ammon was sure.

“I was right,” said Kipp. “You see, I said that the wolf was there.”

“You did. Now keep still, and be quiet.”

Nearly two-thirds of the castle’s roof, walls and bailey were visible from where he stood. Out of habit, he looked for Farlong, and found her in conference with Casavir and Kana near to the entrance to Startear’s tower.

There were too many nooks and crannies to make a superficial survey effective. Too much fog on the ground, and mist in the air. He had to be logical. Assume that the ranger’s plan was to carry out an attack within the walls, and that he had approached from the direction of the copse where his wolf rested. He narrowed his eyes, staring at the hypothetical line of attack over the outer ring-wall, the inner ring-wall…

Bishop could be creeping through the ditch that lay between them, but that would leave him dangerously exposed to attacks from both sides. Around the edge of the bailey instead then… A flight of stairs had run to the Keep’s first floor from there; Farlong had ordered them pulled down at the end of Eleasis... What would be his target…?

A distant cacophony of screeching cries made him look up. Just within sight, journeying in an arrow-shaped troop, long-necked birds were flying in. Their migratory route was bearing them over the castle, and away. A flock of thin ghosts. Cranes, perhaps. Hadn’t they once lived in vast colonies in the marshes between Highcliff and the Mere? But that was irrelevant.

He focused again on the bailey. And instantly he saw a wave of magic, one that shimmered and broke as he set his power against it. And then he was looking at Bishop, and Bishop, through some sixth sense, or through following the hostile spell back to its source…Bishop was looking at him.


	8. Dis

  1. Dis



The ranger grinned, but not for long. Barely a second later, and he was away, disappearing with his sword drawn into another of the small guard towers built into the inner ring-wall.

That might be for the best. It would be very difficult from there to reach the Keep. He could be penned in and trapped. Or simply killed.

“That was him! Did you see him? He was _inside_ the walls!”

Ammon had forgotten about Kipp. He wanted the boy away, still preferring no witnesses to the next part, despite the need for haste. “Leave here.”

“But I can –”

“No, you cannot. Go!” His body was already changing. Wide-eyed, the boy fled down the spiral stairs. As soon as he was out of sight, Ammon let the transformation run its full course. His talons easily knocked away the remaining roof tiles and beams.

Stepping onto the edge of the tower, he was in time to see the golden flare of Bishop’s soul re-enter his vision; he was on the wall now, his longsword ablaze with blood. The man glanced up to him, and shook his head slightly, as if in amusement. Then he hurled himself along the wall-walk. One Greycloak fell, slain by a stabbing blow to his torso before he could turn round.

There was one more Greycloak on the wall between Bishop and the gatehouse. The gatehouse. Curse it. What damage could he do there? Too much, he feared.

He spread his wings, and threw himself from the tower. The air caught under them; his power leant them extra force. Even so, there was a moment of freefall. But his flight evened out; he crossed the gap, and landed hard but upright on the wall. Crumbs of mortar and shards of rock broke loose with the impact.

Shouting was coming from the bailey. First one trumpet, then another took up the call _Enemy Sighted_. If the soldiers started shooting at him now, he was going to deliberately forget his agreement with Farlong about summoning pit fiends within the walls.

He walked over first one dead Greycloak, then another. Their blood smelled – too interesting – to his current form. But changing back would be unwise. As a human, he would be much more seriously inconvenienced by an arrow in the eye than as a baatezu.

Stooping, he shoved himself through the doorway. The room beyond was wide, and high-ceilinged. Half of it was being used as a storeroom: a place to abandon the debris of castle life, the broken weapons and furniture that still seemed too close to usefulness to use as firewood. The rest of the space was kept clear to enable quick access to the three winches: two for the inner and outer door, and the largest in the centre for the portcullis.

It was by the central winch that Bishop was standing, square-shouldered, and keen-eyed. Perhaps it was an illusion of the aura, a side-effect of his devil’s sight, but it did seem that the man looked more as he had when Ammon first encountered him in the githyanki caves. Younger. More alert.

In his left hand he held his longsword. Drops of blood were still running down the pleat of the blade, and landing in a tiny pool on the floor. In his right hand, a small glass vial hung suspended over a loop of heavy chain on the winch. The liquid in the vial shimmered with the same colours as Bishop’s soul: molten gold.

“Funny thing, adamant. The smallest trace of it in any alloy can change its nature. Make bronze or old cast iron think it’s something special. Immune to anything that could dissolve common metal. Make it indestructible. But it’s not. Nothing is.” Bishop laughed softly. “Garius tells me that a splash of this—” he waggled the vial between his thumb and forefinger “—will have the opposite effect. Those little pieces of adamant in the chains and grill are going to remember that they’re _brittle_. _Weak._ And they’ll infect everything around them. So…” he gave out a deep, satisfied breath “…I wouldn’t make any sudden movements. My hand might slip.”

The baatezu wanted to charge. It was unfitting for mortals to play games with the superior races. It was not the proper order of things.

Ammon wanted to reclaim his human form, and blast the man with enough raw power to rip him apart. Neither option was advisable, for now.

“Your scheme is pathetic.” The voice of the cornugon was his own, but undamaged, as whole as it had been the first time he’d drawn a summoning circle. Regardless, he disliked speaking in this shape. It made the human and infernal draw too close together, even for him. “You will die, as Garius intends. Traitors are never useful to any side for long.”

Bishop gave a sharp-edged smile. The faded cuts that surrounded his mouth and eyes became more prominent. “Oh, this was my idea. I let Garius help. And this is only just the start. Hear all those trumpets? The music practice tonight isn’t for you and me.”

The ranger was right. The _Enemy Sighted_ calls were continuing, but had been joined by another, a quick march saying: _To Your Station_. Greycloaks were being ordered to occupy the long-agreed positions, ready to defend against attacks from without. The chances of support arriving at the gatehouse’s southern door, trapping Bishop inside, were reduced.

On the surface, it was a stalemate. But how real was the threat posed by that little glass vial? He didn’t recognise the substance inside it. Still, that didn’t mean that it would fail to do what Bishop claimed. And how much of a blow would the loss of the portcullis be? The inner and outer gates would remain. Each consisted of layered planks of solid oak, loaded with protective enchantments. He weighed up his options.

“Give me the vial, and you have my word, I’ll kill you quickly.”

Bishop gave an amused huff. “I’ll take my chances, thanks. I’m done with promises. Except that one I left on the wall last night. Who was it that found him? Not that thick lunk Bevil?”

“I found him.” He remembered the staring blue eyes. The weight of the corpse on his shoulder. “A pointless waste.”

“Come now, Jerro.” The ranger smiled at him, as if inviting complicity. “We both know you’re not bothered by murder. What I did to the sentry is just mischief compared to what you’ve done.” Hawkes hadn’t been a village boy with a knowledge of the world that stopped ten miles down the road. No more had Brennick and Dalren. Shandra…he wouldn’t think about her.

“Then you should know better than to test my patience.”

Bishop opened his mouth to drawl a retort; Ammon didn’t wait for it, but lunged. He put all the weight of the baatezu’s thick monstrous body behind the spring, and sent his enemy sprawling. He didn’t see what happened to the vial.

Bishop was back on his feet a moment later. “Too slow, Jerro. You won’t catch me like that.”

Ammon let his power surge into his talons, ready for a second charge. A blur of movement, and he felt a sharp pain penetrate the scales on his flank. He swiped after the retreating ranger, and tore the back of his armour away – but there was no redness on the tips of his nails. No revenge yet for the black blood oozing down his hip.

“Another present from Garius,” said Bishop, from his new position near the southern door. He spun his longsword in his hands. “Alchemical silver. He must have had an idea that I’d run into you. Me? I was hoping for the paladin.”

“Your toy will not save you. Your death became certain the instant you killed the sentry.” He pressed his talons against the cut, and willed it to heal. The ability worked less well in this form. It slowed the bleeding, at least, though the flesh wouldn’t close. Damned silver.

“I know. That was the _point_. You see? Oh, and speaking of death…” The ranger spun round with the speed of a cobra. Between one breath and the next, Ammon found himself facing, not the ranger only, but the ranger and Kipp.

Bishop was holding the longsword pressed against the boy’s throat. Horror spread outward from the dark centre of the boy’s eyes, until it reached his flesh, sending a shudder threw him as he became cognizant of what had happened.

Ammon could hardly believe it himself, at first. It was like watching a cheat lay a winning hand of cards on the table: you knew they weren’t from the pack, but there they were, anyway. A new reality to deal with.

He stared at Kipp, and then at the man holding the sword. Wanted to call the boy an imbecile and demand to know what he thought he’d been doing. Sneaking around, trailing after him like a stray dog, then getting caught. _Idiot_. But he held the words back. The last thing the boy heard shouldn’t be a string of curses.

“You were breathing too loud,” Bishop told his prisoner. Even though Kipp was taller, the ranger was by far the stronger. One arm gripped the boy’s arms and torso in a vice; the other kept the edge of the blade to his jugular. It glittered hard, and cold, and fiercely sharp. A twitch of the wrist, and that would be all.

“And you moved your feet the wrong way. That tip-toe gait is how amateurs think it works.” Bishop continued his lesson, his eyes on Ammon and his mouth beside the boy’s ear. “Wolves run in the shadows. And hunters always see their prey before it sees them.”

The ranger began manoeuvring himself and the boy away from the door.

 _Help me_ , Kipp mouthed. He wasn’t blinking; his hands had curled into trembling claws. White lines like strips of sinew broke through his soul’s coppery sheen.

Ammon stepped back, and let the devil recede. He had access again to the full range of his powers. In five heartbeats, he could destroy the ranger. Yet that sword in the hands of that man could do its work faster than a single exhalation. Every ability he possessed was too slow.

If he could send thoughts to the boy’s mind, he’d tell him to flatter Bishop, pretend to change sides, share every piece of dubious gossip he’d overheard while lurking round the Keep. And he’d still probably die. Ammon had seen the ranger’s expression before on demons, and in the eyes of men in condemned cells.

“Too late, Jerro. He’s seen your real face. Like I saw it in that hole in the mountains you were hiding in.” Kipp began writhing in an effort to get free. In reprisal, Bishop grinned and kicked one of the boy’s ankles off the ground. The stumble brought his neck against the sword; it left a thin line across his throat. Blood swelled from the cut, and Kipp stopped struggling.

Ammon glanced to his left where the central winch for the portcullis squatted darkly. The vial was resting intact on its side on top of the roll of chain.

Footsteps sounded behind him, then stopped, and someone swore. Ammon kept his gaze on Bishop.

“Cavalry’s arrived,” the ranger said, not looking troubled in the least. There were more sounds beyond the southern door, and a few Greycloaks appeared. One had his bow drawn. Bishop, his back to the wall, shook his head in warning. “Bad idea, Miles. Don’t wave that thing around like it’s not dangerous. You could cut this boy’s throat with it if you’re not careful.”

“What do you think you’re doing, man?” The Greycloak demanded as he lowered the tip of his arrow, so that it pointed towards the floor. Ammon considered exploiting the distraction, but Bishop’s watchfulness did not slacken. “That’s just a lad you’ve got there. He’s never short-changed you, or said the meat you caught was rotten – let him be.”

The ranger had frowned as the soldier made his plea. He paused before answering. “War games is what I’m doing. The boy wanted to join the heroes on the front line – well, this is what it’s like.” His nostrils flared. He shook the boy, who shuddered in response. “Time to go soon. Or…perhaps there’s time for something else.” His gaze lingered on Ammon. “I think I should remind the brave soldiers here exactly what kind of man you are. Kipp knows already, don’t you?”

“Tell them whatever you want. Their opinion is immaterial.” Kipp’s eyes were fixed on him again. The more Bishop talked, the greater the chance that the druid or the zerth would arrive. Their particular set of abilities were suited to resolving this situation, of saving the boy; his couldn’t. But the man’s manner was starting to betray his eagerness to be gone, and the damned pair of mystics were nowhere in sight. Absent, as usual, when they might for once have been of service.

“About how you killed your way through the Moonstone Mask, then killed your own granddaughter? Nah, I think they’ve heard about that already.” Ammon was sure they had. And now he knew exactly who had been helping that information to spread. “Don’t slump, Kipp.” 

Bishop gave the boy another shake to emphasise his point. Silently, Kipp straightened. He had stopped trying to make eye contact, and was staring blankly at the opposite wall.

“So,” said Bishop, “you see that vial there, Jerro? Go and pour it over the portcullis chain, and this one here gets a few more days to live.”

No dawn of hope showed itself on Kipp’s face. That was for the best. There was no reason for it, and if it wasn’t there, then it couldn’t be taken away.

“What guarantee could you give that you’d release the boy?” He wouldn’t. But the question used up some more time.

Bishop raised his eyebrows. “My word, of course. Maybe I’ve got one last promise left in me.”

“Your word is worth even less than mine.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Remember – but you don’t, do you? – when your granddaughter got herself captured, and I was dispatched to rescue her. As fair payment of a life debt. And that wasn’t even a bond I chose.”

No one in the room moved or spoke. Trumpets were still sounding out on the walls.

Bishop should be the one checkmated, trapped, and bound for a traitor’s death. Instead he looked as if he had them all on a long leash. _And me with them. He’s going to pay for that._

“Ten,” said Bishop. Kipp still wasn’t meeting his eyes. No one was coming. “Nine.”

A wall of fire leapt up beneath Bishop. At the same time, Ammon flung himself towards them.

He wasn’t sure what happened next. Greycloaks shouted; no one screamed. He had the impression of movement, and struggle. He was _in_ the struggle, grappling and willing power into his arms. One of his hands warped into a talon, and he ripped the nails down the face of his enemy.

Then a Greycloak at the door _did_ scream, and bent double clutching his gut. His pulse thudding in his ears, he chased a dark, fleet figure out through the passage that joined both walls to the gatehouse, and saw Bishop, his hair burnt and his armour smouldering, vanish over the outer ring-wall.


	9. Avernus

  1. Avernus



He ran to the edge. The ranger was limping rapidly away into the dusk. Out of range already, curse him. Bloody footprints on the pressed earth nearest the wall marked his passing.

At the far edge of the farmland, not so near that its composition was detectable, a dark line had formed. It was ragged, uneven, and growing at speed as more and more darting figures joined it from the road.

Bishop made straight for the line. His shape was faint, blurred, almost merging into the earth at his feet. Magic rippled over the space he occupied.

“You!” said Ammon. The Greycloak archer that had spoken to Bishop drew back, alarmed. “Can you see him?”

“No – he disappeared after knifing Vana.”

“Then listen carefully. Watch the land between here and the enemy line. A skeleton will appear. Shoot it.”

The Greycloak looked at him, opened his mouth, then closed it again. He put an arrow to the string, and drew it back with an ease that suggested years of practice.

Bishop had already covered a third of the distance between the wall and the army. He was no longer limping. The man had somehow managed to swallow a healing potion in his headlong flight.

Ammon concentrated, tried to find the correct balance between the focus his magic required, and the fluidity of instinct this trick would need to work. The timing had to be perfect.

He muttered a word of summoning, and saw the skeleton spring from the ground two feet from the ranger. The man’s reflexes were better than should be possible for a human of no remarkable ancestry, no otherworldly power. Fast enough to avoid the skeleton, but not quite fast enough to avoid the arrow that slammed into his shoulder.

He stumbled.

A second arrow found a home in his back. He convulsed for a moment. And then he carried on running.

Ammon willed every curse he knew down on Bishop’s head.

“Did I get him?” the Greycloak asked.

“Twice. Not fatally.”

“Shame.” The Greycloak replaced his next arrow in its quiver, and leant his chin on the top of his bow.

Once the ranger deemed himself safe from attack, he turned. He pulled out the first arrow, and flung it aside. Then he repeated the drama with the one in his back. For that piece of foolish bravado, his body demanded a price. The remainder of the distance to the lines of his new allies he completed at an agonised hobble.

Ammon waved a hand, and the skeleton turned back into soil and grit. His left hand was covered in blood, he realised. As was his right. The front of his armour was splashed with blood, and his forehead felt damp. Not because of sweat. The air stank of flesh and iron.

Around him, Greycloaks stood ready. Ten of them armed with spears, shields over their shoulder, and longswords on their belts occupied his stretch of the outer wall. The capable archer was already away to join his like on the inner wall: longbowmen in bracers and brigandines and with hawk’s eye charms pinned to their shirt collars.

This was as good a place as any to stay and fight. Assuming a frontal assault, this stretch would be critical in repelling attacks, and defending the main gates.

There was, in fact, no real need to go back into the gatehouse. Someone else could arrange matters there.

Then he remembered the damned vial. It had to be removed, taken far away from anything containing adamant, then analysed.

Slowly, he walked back into the passage that led to the control room. The smell of blood grew stronger.

He rounded the corner. A covered stretcher was being born out through the north door; the Tyrran dwarf from the temple followed it, his hands drawn up within the long sleeves of his robes, his head bowed.

Five people were still in the room. Casavir watching from a corner, Neeshka and Khelgar standing by the heap of broken equipment, and, kneeling beside a mess of blood in the centre of the floor, Sergeant Bevil and Farlong. He was saying something to her. She didn’t seem to take it in; she looked stupefied. Her eyes were fixed on the wet red paving stones in front of her.

He didn’t wait to see if she’d notice him. The vial lay where it had fallen. He walked round the grim tableau, and, after checking the seal, stowed it in a wallet on his belt.

Casavir regarded him in silence, brows drawn down. Ammon frowned back. The paladin could voice an objection, or take himself and his judgement elsewhere. To the hells, as far as he was concerned.

The tiefling and her normally obstreperous friend were quiet and serious.

At the south door, he paused. Looked back at Farlong; she’d wrapped her arms around herself, and seemed to be emerging from a trance. He wanted to go to her.

Finally, she noticed him. Her mouth opened. At first, she said nothing – then, “How many more of my friends are you going to kill?”

“Bishop –” Her eyes flashed. The anger he saw there was pure, and very cold.

“—I don’t care. Get out of my sight.”

He could argue with her. Make her listen to what had happened. Force her to admit that the outcome – the stretcher and the blood seeping through cracks in the mortar – had been a foregone conclusion from the moment the boy came within Bishop’s reach. Force her to see that it wasn’t his fault.

The tiefling was shaking her head, and making warning signals with her hands. She was right. He belonged on the walls. In that battle, whatever Farlong thought of him was irrelevant.

Outside, the sun was fading over the Sea of Swords in a haze of grey and orange. A raven croaked on the rocks above the Keep. Ammon crossed the wall-walk to stand in the lea of Startear’s bulky tower.

The enemy lines were moving forward, though not yet with much decisiveness. It appeared more as if the constant arrival of new forces to augment those already gathered was pushing the front towards the castle.

There were shadows, skeletons, small crews of vampires, and shadow priests. Everything the scouts and Farlong had described was present in the chaotic horde. He could discern no units; indeed, to think in terms of enemy lines was to stretch the definition of what a line was. But then, Garius would be counting on force of numbers, not strength, discipline, and skill to bring him victory.

How different would the field appear if the Guardian were free, and acting of as his own general? There would be no battle at all, he supposed. At his full strength, the champion of Illefarn had annihilated armies single-handed. A castle held by fewer than five hundred latter-day barbarians would prove no obstacle to him.

Ammon’s mind persisted in conjuring images of armoured phalanxes, illusionists in green cloaks and white tunics, and rows of deadly arbalests. A vision he knew he’d never see, and that had not been known on the face of Toril for an age and a half. ‘So what are you?’ the wife he’d disregarded for decades had demanded, the last time he spoke to her. ‘A scholar pretending to be a warlock? Or a warlock pretending to be a scholar?’

He’d believed until recently that question was settled. Or he would have if Aldanon didn’t keep reminding him of his former pursuits. Farlong too, when she wanted to flatter him. It didn’t seem as if that would be a problem again. That was one advantage the day had brought him.

Ammon drew his knife from his belt to check the sharpness. It cut the skin of his thumb open with barely a press of the wrist. Tolerably sharp then.

He resheathed it. Ground his teeth. He certainly didn’t want to think about the wife he hadn’t thought he loved, and now he didn’t want to think about Farlong either. Unfortunately, the living were much more difficult to ignore than the long dead and buried. Dwellers on the Prime could appear in the full midday sun, and not only on sleepless, hopeless nights between moonset and dawn.

“Are you alright?” Sergeant Bevil. Ammon had expected him to stay with his friend. He stared flatly at the Harbourman as an answer to the stupid question. He was alive and on his feet, therefore he was fine.

Bevil flinched, but didn’t retreat. “There’s blood on your side.”

“Clearly.” And on his hands, and chest, and face.

“I think it’s yours. The blood on your side, I mean. You should…er…?”

Awkwardly, Bevil offered him a healing potion. The big hand that grasped the bottle shook as it held it out.

“Keep it.” Ammon turned back to the massing darkness. “You’ll need it, Sergeant. Soon.”

“We were at the door, you know. Me and Lila and a few Greycloaks. We heard most of what was happening. Lila ordered us to stay back.” Why was the man telling him this? As if it mattered now. “She thought having more people charge in there would make things worse. So she sent for a healer, and Brother Ivarr came, but too late.”

Bevil’s voice was hoarse; he sounded wretched. Either he should pull himself together, or yield his place on the wall to someone in the correct frame of mind for battle.

“Go and speak to your men. Sergeant. Make sure they’re ready.”

In the corner of his eye, he saw the Harbourman freeze, and then draw himself upright. As the thickset man began to move away, the mumbled ‘as milord wishes’ wasn’t said anywhere near quietly enough to escape Ammon’s hearing. That was all to the good; anger would serve him better than grief.

And then he waited. Drank a healing potion from the few stowed in his wallet. Listened to the sounds of the evening, and tried to separate out each one; identify which sounds came from the bailey, which from the soldiers, which from the landscape, and then focus on the remainder: those that came from the enemy.

There was hammering, he was sure of that. Hammering implied carpentry, and carpentry could mean siege towers or engines or both. Since the Keep still contained several crates full of blastglobes, he wasn’t concerned by the idea of siege towers. Catapults and battering rams could pose a much greater threat.

The foremost…clusters…in the army suddenly appeared much nearer than they had a few moments ago. He stared. A pack of vampires were in the lead. The tallest, a gaunt elf with pale eyes, was pushing ahead of his fellows, striding eagerly towards the castle as if it were a home he’d long missed.

A trumpet call sounded three times in an ascending staccato burst. The signalman was on the roof of Startear’s tower. Similar calls echoed back from other watchers on other towers.

Ammon crouched low beneath the parapet. The Greycloaks on his stretch of the outer wall did the same.

“Give it to the bastards!” one shouted up to the archers, who were already bending their longbows.

“Just don’t hit us!” another yelled.

An archer bawled back cheerfully, “Arsehole! You shouldn’t have cleaned me out at cards!”

Ammon glanced up to see the aasimar warrior with the ridiculous name upbraiding the vocal archer. Good that someone was controlling them, but it would be a waste of her combat skills to leave her there. She should be in the thick of the hand-to-hand combat.

The bailey would be where those decisions were being taken, or else around Farlong, wherever she was.

“Quiet, the lot of you!” Bevil snapped at his infantrymen. They stopped trading jokes with each other. The man nearest Ammon had kept silent throughout, beyond throwing regular nervous looks to his left.

“Ready.” The orders rang out from the inner wall. “Lift.” The Greycloak next to him tried to curl into a ball. “Fire!”

Twenty arrows flew overhead. Wherever they landed, they would do little to halt the charge, unless the heads had some special properties. Had any struck a target at all? He smiled grimly at the thought that, while he might not be able to see Garius’s rabble, they couldn’t see him either. They would not appreciate the surprise.

Slowly, he drew his falchion. If only the vampires would run faster. They would have a warm welcome to Crossroad Keep, he’d make sure of that.

The archers were sending volley after disciplined volley towards the enemy. He could hear them landing now, sometimes with a crack of fractured bone, sometimes with a more solid _thunk_. And there were screams. Vampires, most likely. Perhaps shadow priests.

The sound of scrabbling…nail on stone. He’d seen no ladders with them. The scrabbling continued. The enemy were still outside the range of the Greycloaks’ spears, but not out of the range of him.

“Halt!” The command rang out from the inner wall. The last volley of arrows fell onto the enemy.

Ammon rose to his feet, and took in the fields packed with thousands of his foes. Then he stepped onto the parapet. A few yards below him, the fastest of the vampires looked up. It was clinging to the wall with claw-like hands. Some thirty or forty of its brethren were doing the same. Its pale eyes widened, and it began to scuttle crabwise away from him.

He directed a bolt of red and black flame towards it. Howling, the vampire dropped, though the flame continued, leaping from one monster to the next in succession, until it looked as if the wall itself was on fire. In Cormyr he’d tolerated a vampire as his tutor, and let him live once he’d learned all he could from him. Tonight would more than balance out that unwise act of mercy.

A second chain of fire destroyed more of the climbers. He had no chance to relish the sight, for the next scream he heard came from among the soldiers.

At least three vampires were grappling with their intended victims. They must have flown to reach the top so soon, though why the rest of the pack hadn’t done that to start with escaped him. A question of willpower, perhaps.

The nearest Greycloak had already been squashed down against the wall-walk under the weight of one of the creatures. It was leaning closer and closer, overcoming the weak resistance of its prey’s arms.

Ammon seized the creature by the hair, and yanked its head back hard. He allowed its eyes a moment to focus on his face, then drove his falchion downward, the blade dark and aflame, directly through its gaping mouth. The pale light in the eyes died.

He moved on. Two vampires were fighting back-to-back in the centre of the wall. The big Harbourman was trading blows with the nearer of the two. He landed a hit to its gut. This creature – the mortal remains of a blonde human – stumbled, recovered, and lunged. Ammon melted its skin into its skull with a single blast of power.

That left one. He was on the verge of dealing it the same fate as its packmate, when two arrows appeared in its throat. A gift from the archers on the inner wall.

He looked over the parapet. There were no more climbers, but he could see ladders being born in on the shoulders of the enemy; monsters were surging forward on all sides.

“Throw the bodies over the wall,” Sergeant Bevil ordered. He seemed much cooler than expected, as if he had changed into a different person on the first volley of arrows. Not weak, then, for all that he had sounded on the verge of crying the last time they had spoken.

“Decapitate them first,” Ammon added. The men on his right and left gawped at him as if he’d spoken in an alien tongue.

“Do what he says,” Bevil ordered. He demonstrated with the corpse that had lately been attacking him.

Once the wall-walk was clear of bodies, Ammon returned to his earlier position beside the tower, and waited for the next assault. When it came, it was absurd in its sheer wastefulness. Skeleton soldiers leant ladders against the walls, and began to climb them. Although they lacked the courtesy to allow the shafts to protrude over the parapet, so could not be shoved away by hand, it was child’s play for the Greycloaks to knock the ladders down with their spears.

After the tenth ladder fell, Bevil reappeared at his side. Ammon watched him warily, but he seemed to be retaining his composure. In fact, he looked exasperated. “This is insane.”

Ammon sent a chain of fire into the morass of enemy bodies at the foot of the wall to make sure they stayed finished. “For an army with limited numbers, it would be. But Garius does not care about his losses. His troops can be recreated anew every night if he requires it.”

“If they keep this up, they’ll be able to walk into the castle over a hill of bones.”

“That may be his plan.” The exchange went no further, for a party of humanoid shadows had escaped into the midst of the soldiers, either through their cunning, or the men’s carelessness. Ammon wiped out four of them; the Greycloaks disposed of the rest.

On consideration, it was better that Garius had adopted this approach. A more intelligent strategy would suggest hurry. And hurry would have meant that Bishop or some other source had told him of the planned raid on the sanctum of his master. Since he seemed content to waste troops on the walls, that implied that he did not yet know.

But it was still long before midnight. It would be many hours before dawn: the fight was only beginning.


	10. Hells

  1. Hells



It was just before midnight that the siege towers were dragged forward. Two were trundled towards his section.

The soldiers threw a couple of blastglobes into each one, and the brittle panels of timber exploded into flames like pine trees at the end of a dry summer. The skeletons in them were trapped, and consumed.

The vampires, though – they flung themselves from the roofs and boarding ramps. Some arrived on the walls unscathed; others trailed fire from their clothes and hair. Those proved the more dangerous. Their grasping hands, and howls, and maddened charges terrified the Greycloaks more than anything else.

“Stand your ground!” he shouted to them, and kicked the body of a vampire he’d skewered into the trench between the ring-walls. An archer put an arrow through its heart at a signal from him.

When the wall-walk was once again clear of their enemies, he assessed the Greycloaks. All of the original ten were alive, but they were flagging. A few leant heavily on their spears; others had slumped to rest below the parapet. Their extensive training and drills had failed to include real vampire attacks. Worse, their sergeant was propping himself up against a battlement, a rag pressed to his neck.

He pulled the man’s thick hand away. The rag removed, he was unsurprised to see the distinct marks of a vampire bite – two swollen, raw wounds each the size of a salamander’s eye.

“Am I…?” The sergeant looked nauseous. That could be a symptom of the bite, or it could be pure terror.

“Not if you go to a healer at once.” In theory, only lethal bites reproduced the curse. On account of the long periods of his life spent away from the safety of libraries, Ammon knew that theory could prove an unreliable guide.

Bevil gulped. “Look after my Greycloaks.”

“The enemy is my primary concern,” he retorted. Then, registering the sergeant’s expression, he added in amendment, “but if they stay disciplined and follow my instructions, I expect they will come to no harm.”

He detailed one of the less capable soldiers for escort duty, and handed him his knife as soon as the sergeant’s back was turned. “A precaution,” he told the whey-faced man. “It’s enchanted against the undead.”

When they were gone, he wondered why he had yielded to Bevil’s plea. At least he hadn’t gone so far as to promise to protect them. Experience had schooled him to suspect that if he did, the little company would be dead by sunrise. Fate looked on his promises with a peculiarly vengeful eye.

The utter destruction of the first siege towers had not dissuaded the enemy’s generals from further identical attempts. Still, before the next pair of siege towers came in range, he was able to examine the condition of the nine remaining Greycloaks.

Two he hauled upright by their collars. Another one was staring at the sharpened stakes in the ditch with a blank fascination that had begun to alarm his comrades. Ammon force-fed him a potion of restoration. Afterwards, he seemed more lucid. That could have been the effect of the potion, or of the shock of having his nose grabbed and a bottle of foul-smelling liquid tipped down his throat.

This time he was more prepared for the efforts at flight from the burning towers. Those vampires that made acrobatic leaps were impaled on the readied spears of the Greycloaks. The seven able to transform into bats dropped stunned from the air after being caught in a simple chain invocation. Dark winged bodies thumped into the growing pile of wreckage at the foot of the outer wall. One landed near his feet; he burned it to ashes, and knocked what remained into the ditch.

“Signaller!” he called. Moonlight caught on the helmet of the Greycloak on the roof of Startear’s tower as he -no, she – came near.

“Yes?” He thought he recognised the guard who’d stood sentry beside Farlong’s bed chamber. She had a name, which he hadn’t troubled to note.

“What’s happening on the rest of the walls? Are they holding?” From her vantage point, she should be able to see most of the bailey, and the defences.

“Yes. A shadow priest and a few skeletons made it over the inner wall one time – the Lady knows how, ‘cos I don’t – and they were stuck full of arrows before they could do anything.” She frowned. “There’ve been dead and injured though. More injured than dead. I’ve seen a lot of the lads staggering off to Ivarr for treatment. Not covered in blood, so I dunno if they’re faking or not.”

“How many precisely?”

“About twenty.”

The news was in line with his expectations. If serious cracks had formed this early in the assault, it would have indicated alarming weakness among the defenders. A score of soldiers drained of energy, and only a few dead…that was a good omen for the rest of the night.

“Inform me immediately if anything changes.”

The signaller saluted casually. “Yes, sir. Well, I can give you one update now. They’re sending in the relief. Fresh troops are headed this way.”

Ammon turned back to survey the fields. Still thronged with enemies, still growing more packed as shadows creeping in from the south merged with the dark mass already present. And he could hear hammering again. Where were they getting the timber for the siege towers? Shadows were an infinite resource; trees weren’t.

That the Greycloaks by him would have a chance to rest was – a relief. The mere proximity of the huge undead army was draining them. One kept sliding inexorably down his spear, until his comrade jabbed him in the ribs to wake him up. Much longer, and they wouldn’t be able to repel a lame kobold.

But he would his own errand to run when the reinforcements came. If only to give his mind some respite in the shorter and shorter intervals between attacks.

Fresh archers filed across the inner wall, as the old ones slipped away via a side-door into Startear’s tower. The archmage wouldn’t like that. If he was still there, of course: natives of Sigil were experts in avoiding other people’s battles.

His spearmen became restless. They started craning round, looking over their shoulders in the naked hope of spying their successors.

“Eyes ahead.” They obeyed him.

To their undoubted joy, and his lack of it, the next shift marched out of the gatehouse after only a few more minutes. As one final figure stepped out onto the inner wall, the nine spearmen fell back towards him. This last man to arrive was well over six feet tall, and dressed in shining plate mail that made him look more like a blade golem than a human. If not for the Eye of Tyr on his tunic and emblazoned on his shield, Ammon wouldn’t have recognised Nevalle.

Wildly, he wondered if the knight was going to try and arrest him. Had the argument earlier broken Nasher’s tolerance? If so, he wished he’d known: he would have gone much further than calling the ailing prince a charlatan.

“What are you doing here?”

“The same as you.” Most of Nevalle’s face was obscured by his visor. Since he always looked either prim or sullen, any guess as to his expression had good odds of being correct.

Ammon gave a sharp laugh. “ _You_?”

The knight prized his station as Nasher’s general dogsbody far more than he did his ability to wield a sword.

“I fought at Redfallows Watch, and Wyvern Tor. I assure you, I will acquit myself just as well as you. Warlock.”

Redfallows Watch was a hamlet raised above the water by stakes in the Mere of Dead Men; Wyvern Tor was an unusually large rock on a mountain slope full of other large rocks. Neither sounded like the stuff of which legends were built.

Ammon stared at the grille in the visor that must grant Nevalle some measure of vision. “We shall see.”

The suit of armour folded its gauntlets behind it. The helmet moved slightly.

“Men, you have served Neverwinter honourably tonight.” The knight addressed himself to the nine Greycloaks, who still hovered uncertainly between them. “But now it is time for some well-deserved rest. Dismiss.”

The men stayed where they were. A few exchanged nervous looks. Finally, one stood half-way to attention, his spear providing him with more support than his legs seemed capable of. He saluted.

“Is that right, sir?”

In other circumstances, Ammon might have appreciated the situation. As it was, despite the task awaiting him, he still regretted being unable to watch Nevalle’s face. For once, it might betray something other than dim self-righteousness.

“Yes,” he replied. “You can all go. For the present. Report to Kana for further orders.”

He followed the Greycloaks off the wall. As he cut down through Startear’s tower, it appeared deserted. Curse the mage: he could have been useful. Even if he required his own weight in gold before lifting a finger in assistance.

Emerging into the bailey felt like crossing into another plane. There were pine torches burning in every corner, while lanterns filled with magelight cast a more steady light on the most crucial areas: a field hospital beyond the temple, the path of the Keep, and a patch of trampled straw in front of the tavern, where some kind of stew was being served to the Greycloaks as they went to and from the walls. The contents of the steaming cauldron smelled savoury, even inviting.

But, at the moment, it was only a distraction.

He stood by the armourer’s house, and took stock. Despite the crowds of soldiers, the bailey felt quiet. On edge. Yet everyone seemed to know their assigned roles, and to be going about them far more efficiently than he’d ever expected.

Not that their training and calm would save them forever. They would start to crack. Mortal armies did. They knew too well what they had to lose.

A small elf in a long blue robe of some rare material passed him, and paused, his back to Ammon. He seemed to be looking for someone.

“You were supposed to be in the library.”

The elf started, and swung around. He was holding a wand of fire, and had two more hanging from his belt. “Ammon. You look truly…chthonic.” The tip of his nose twitched in disapproval. “As it happens, I was in the library, but the circumstances which brought me there have changed. The undead, I find, require my presence much more than Aldanon.”

“The undead can wait. Nothing is more important than opening the gate into _his_ realm. You must—”

“—the portal is ready.” Sand interrupted him just as flames ran across a section of the north wall, and shot high into the night. The elf’s lips quirked up. “Qara, I assume. And all too liable to be consumed by one of her own fireworks. Such a shame.”

Ammon was not going to let himself be distracted. “How can it be ready? Aldanon said it would need another day.”

“Aldanon noted the solution to all those little snags he’d encountered on a napkin at breakfast. Harcourt discovered said napkin along with three bread rolls, a gerbil and a magic ring in the pocket of his nightgown some two hours ago.” Sand paused, and gave him a sharp, sideways look of the kind that he hated receiving. “I thought our glorious leader would have told you already. Where is she, by the way?”

She was on the outer wall in the south-east corner, not far from where the sentry had been slain one day ago. The light of the Sword of Gith had made her location immediately obvious. “Find her yourself. I’m not her bodyguard.”

He disliked the sudden lack of expression even more than the sideways glance; he’d worked with the mage long enough to recognise when he was repressing laughter.

More fires exploded to the north. Without another word to Sand, he set off in that direction, past the temple where soldiers queued, the walking wounded awaiting treatment, then past the pallets for the more seriously hurt, then past identical pallets for the dead. There was one among them that he needed to see before it was sent for cremation, though…

He strode onwards. The irritating mage had contrived to load him with yet another concern than no one else seemed to be dealing with.

Qara was on her own on the outer walls, intoxicated with her power and half dead on her feet from it. The Greycloaks that should have been fighting beside her were instead cowering on the inner wall. As he neared her, the stonework cracked and hissed under the soles of his boots. He perceived the rush of heat as oppressive; to humans without his blood and history, it would be much worse.

“Stand down.”

The infant wonder gazed at him as if not comprehending the instruction. “I’ve lit fires everywhere. Under them. Around them. They keep coming.” Her oval face shifted from vacancy into a snarl. “I’ll burn them all.”

Sand might have some reasonable grounds in hoping for her demise. Still, that would not be allowed to happen tonight.

“Your lips are turning blue,” he told her truthfully. “There are black veins in your temples. If you’re very fortunate, you’re about to faint.”

That seemed to reach her through the arcane fog around her brain. “What – I’m not – what do you mean, if I’m fortunate?”

“What do you think?” She hesitated. “Go. Eat. Rest. There will be no shortage of shadows to destroy in your future, I guarantee it.

She looked around her, as if noticing the burnt stones and heat for the first time. “I…yes…”

The girl shuffled away like someone in a dream.

After watching her as far as the stairs in case she wandered off the edge of the wall, he set about organising matters: one Greycloak he sent to escort the sorceress and request reinforcements from Kana; the rest he ordered back to the position they’d abandoned. Albeit not without good reason.

That left him free to pursue his own affairs. Not that his next task was without a wider relevance. Farlong had to be willing to work with him again before they stepped through the portal. Sand’s news made the need to reconcile more urgent than before. This would expedite the process… Assuming the answer was the one he wanted.

He passed a basket full of dried meadefloss, and an incense burner sending a plume of aromatic smoke aloft. Then he was in amongst the dead. A single live guard had been left to keep vigil over them. The man blanched when he saw Ammon, but didn’t shout for Ivarr, or try and stop him.

There were seven bodies so far, all covered and, to judge by the shapes, laid out with their arms crossed over their chests in the style of Neverwinter. The boy was easy to locate: the burly soldiers seemed larger-than-life under their rough blankets, lying still like old kings; he seemed to drown under his.

Not hesitating, Ammon pulled the blanket away. The boy’s eyes had been closed; that was one relief. He’d dreaded seeing them open. If only he’d never noticed the resemblance to his nephew, but…at least he’d never have to see it again, after tonight.

And now Kipp didn’t resemble anyone, not Corentin, not even himself: death had smoothed out the irregularities and signs of difference.

First, he examined the throat. There was nothing…it was completely free of marks. That was not what he had hoped to discover.

The clothes were the same ones the boy had worn in the gatehouse, and in all probability for the last week or more. The shirt was thick with blood.

He touched the stains on his own armour; he was bringing the boy’s blood back to him. Was that thought ironic, or merely mawkish? The latter, more than likely.

There was a rip in the fabric of the shirt. That didn’t have to mean anything. He’d been a stable boy prone to scrambling round the castle’s attics and cellars. It could have been caught on anything.

The skin underneath was as intact as the throat. In that case, where had the killing blow fallen? Based on the absence of injury, the boy had fallen stone dead in the peak of health. This diversion had been useless. Unless…

“Ammon. I thought I might see you here before too long.” Another damn Tyrran.

“Your powers of prophecy are remarkable.” He turned round to gift the dwarf priest Ivarr with a sarcastic smile. “What a pity you failed to employ them to save the soldiers here.”

Ivarr removed his glasses from a pocket in his white apron, and peered up at him through them. An affectation. “You should clean your face,” he said in tones dripping with irritating mildness. All the more irritating because of Ammon’s awareness that he needed to know what the dwarf had seen. “You’re frightening the Greycloaks.”

“If the sight of blood frightens them, we may as well surrender the castle now.”

“I think the sight of blood frightens most of us mortals, whether we show it or not.” The blonde dwarf ambled away, returning with a damp cloth. He offered it.

Ammon frowned at it, then snatched it up, and dragged the cloth over his face and beard, before cleaning his hands and finally wiping it over the leather plates of his armour. Afterwards, he let the cloth burn to ashes in his palm, then inverted it, so that they fell beside the pallet where the boy lay.

A greenish light flickered near the wall beside the gatehouse. A hiatus, then panicked voices rose from the same direction. He was out of time. He needed to be back in the fight.

“What wounds did you see? How was he injured?” He had to have an answer.

Ivarr folded his hands in front of him. The ends of his eyebrows flexed up in a dwarfish gesture that human faces couldn’t imitate. “Why does it matter to you how Kipp was killed?”

Ammon had been ready for that. Priests always assumed that the abilities their master or mistress lent them also endowed them with the right to pry into the minds of others. “Keep your curiosity to yourself. You’re winning no converts to your religion tonight. Either you will tell me, or I will reanimate the boy’s corpse, and force it to remake the wound that slew it.”

He was bluffing. In magecraft, he had favoured the same schools as the ancient enchanters of Illefarn. As a warlock, his necromantic powers were limited to summoning skeletons. A real necromancer could have restored the boy to a semblance of life…for a while.

But the bluff worked. The priest stepped back, and began his account. It was delivered with detached calm. Battlefield work was apparently not new to him.

“He was killed by a single cut across the neck. He bled out very quickly. When I arrived beside him, he did not respond. He could not be revived.”

The dwarf stroked the boy’s hair, combing a cowlick to one side with his fingers, and began to rearrange his arms. Was he lying? Playing some obscure game at Ammon’s expense?

When he’d been the same age as Kipp, and even afterwards, well into his adulthood, the ranking folk of Neverwinter established contracts, deals and rights with a shake of the hand; by tradition, the left. A mark of mutual agreement that reality should occupy a particular shape, like liquid silver poured into a mould.

Ivarr, being a Tyrran priest, simply expected him to accept the words he uttered as truth, as if his god or fine manners sprinkled with divine fairy dust held any weight with Ammon. As if his silver should be counted as pure because the person measuring it could recite prayers and sermonise with a straight face.

The dwarf looked up. “You did not kill him, you know.” He drew the blanket over Kipp’s head. The boy vanished, along with whatever he might have become: a second Bishop, or a second Farlong, or more likely a stable master living his days out obscurely in a small principate of no great significance.

The green light he’d seen near the gatehouse. That had to be investigated now. He walked away quickly without looking back at Ivarr, or the thin shape on its pallet. He had an answer. Would that satisfy Farlong?

When he’d first conceived of the idea, he’d thought it would. She couldn’t hold a grudge against him for a murder he hadn’t committed. Now he wasn’t as sure as he had been, and the idea of chasing after her to protest his innocence seemed all the more pathetic. He wasn’t going to abase himself in front of her.

Voices shouted on the walls. Something hissed. A noise followed, a shattering sound. Green light flashed, his head stung, and the world spun around, then turned blacker than jet.


	11. Concordance

  1. Concordance



When he came round, cobblestones were pressing uncomfortably against his left cheek and temple. The pure blackness had receded; once more the bailey was a mixture of night-filled corners, and pine torches, and magelight. But the composition was off…flame and shadow roiled against their boundaries; figures were running around, and he thought they were Greycloaks, but they wavered, and ribbons of rainbow light shimmered on their swords and breastsplates.

He tensed, and discovered that he still had feeling in all his limbs. After spitting out a piece of something – straw? – he pushed himself up, and stood. Then he closed his eyes and counted to three. Some of the nausea diminished. He didn’t throw up.

There were bodies on the ground. About…ten…Greycloaks. They’d fallen where whatever-it-was had caught them. None of the ones near him were moving. A man further away gave a groan.

He tried to kneel and examine the nearest soldier, but his vision melted and swirled like quicksilver winding through water, and he was forced to stop.

He closed his eyes again, hoping it would help restore his sense of balance, and opened them to find two versions of the druid looking back. Not an improvement. He wanted to stride away from her, yet at that moment, he wasn’t sure in which direction _away_ might be.

“What happened?” he said. “That was negative energy—” The feeling of the shock of pitch blackness returned to him. Yes, it could have been nothing else. And it was concentrated…so concentrated….

It couldn’t have come under the walls, and he’d have noticed if the gates themselves were down; it must have travelled _over_ the walls. A missile?

“Take him to the infirmary. Walking wounded.” The druid was speaking to someone on his right. She’d ignored his question completely.

“I have to return to the walls,” he told her. “Leave the hospital to the soldiers, and heal me – now.”

The green of the druid’s four eyes seemed to turn a shade darker. “You can wait in line like everyone else. Casavir, Zhjaeve, Khelgar and Lila are on the walls, and the defences are holding.” Both druids gave a tight smile. “Perhaps you aren’t as essential as you claimed you were.”

The druids retreated, bounding away along opposite diagonals. He put a hand on the hilt of his falchion to steady himself. Struck by a missile, then savaged by a mouse. He wondered what had brought on that fit of temper from the reserved elf, then recalled that not long ago he’d accused her of being a traitor. He felt too light-headed to trouble himself with remembering why.

“Sir? Can you walk?” It was the steward Howel, dressed in the long grey robe of a field surgeon. Another damned civilian volunteer. The steward should mind his own health, and stay well away from him.

“Of course I can walk,” he said, and did, though at every step he wanted to clutch his temples and press back the hot pain in his skull.

Howel hovered around him, looking like the unremarkable half-elf he was, except that his height strayed between three feet and ten feet, depending on the angle of the light.

Something dark and solid loomed ahead of him. He reached out, and his fingers brushed cool stone blocks. A line of slumped or sitting Greycloaks stretched along the wall like an abandoned game of dominos.

“Wait here, sir. I have to go and help Elanee…some of those men could still be alive.”

The steward-cum-surgeon ran back into the revolving darkness. Afterwards, naturally, Ammon realised he should have grabbed the man, and forced him to lead him to a healer. Now he would have to find one himself, and in his current state, it would be a challenge.

Whatever happened, he refused to collapse like the soldiers. He had concussion; that was obvious. Soon, he would go to the head of the line, and insist that Ivarr or whoever was there should make themselves useful. For now, he’d have to wait until the ground stopped swaying. He braced his back against the wall. Focused on a plank of wood resting abandoned against the smithy; as soon as it stayed the same shape, he’d be able to go.

Green light flashed. Somewhere else. Near the gate again?

He lost track of time. No one new joined the line; that could mean the latest missile had done little damage, or else that everyone it hit was unconscious, or dead. He had been here for too long, much too long, regardless. There was only one way to learn what was happening, even if it meant walking in circles until he found someone to commandeer…

“Ammon!”

The long face of Captain Farlong appeared in front of him. Her forehead was creased; she was breathing hard, as if she’d been running. “Howel said you almost took a direct hit from that fucking catapult.”

He couldn’t follow her as she moved around him – checking for signs of harm, presumably. She blinked in and out of his line of sight. If only she’d stay still so he could focus on her, that would be much better.

A catapult… Garius must finally have realised that siege towers on their own were a waste of good timber.

Say they lost ten soldiers, stunned or killed, with each blast. On top of that, consider the burden on the reserves and healers, and the damage the fear of the next strike would wreak on the resolve of the garrison.

“It must be stopped. How far away is it?”

“A hundred yards, not more. Neeshka has it in hand.”

“The tiefling? Alone?” She was undeniably gifted in her field, but obliterating a siege engine was a very different proposition to cracking a safe, or sliding a knife into the right back.

“Wait and see.” Farlong briefly solidified in front of him; he reached out and grabbed her shoulders before she could move again.

“Keep still.”

Farlong looked baffled. “I’ve been standing right here since –” Her eyes widened. “Ah – there’s a gash behind your ear. Concussion?”

He felt himself scowl. “Yes. You should be on the walls.” And he was ashamed by how glad he was that she was with him instead.

“I had to see you. I mean – well. Never mind.” He scanned her face. Her eyes were bloodshot; apart from seeming intensely tired, she was unharmed.

There was something he had intended to say when he saw her again… Oh yes. The gatehouse.

“Bishop killed him. Ask the priest if you don’t believe me.”

She went out of focus. When he could discern her expression again, she was staring at the wall to his right. “I know. I knew as soon as I saw his body.”

“Then why did you say it was me?” Reflexively, his grip tightened on her shoulders to stop her drawing back, as he feared she would.

“I was angry. I had to be angry with someone.” Her lips curved down. She glanced at him, and their eyes met before she returned to examining the stonework. “Bishop was gone. You were there. Being angry with you delayed the moment when I’d have to start asking myself who it was that let a boy hang round in the middle of a war.”

Adolescents had been recruited to the standing armies of the Sword Coast for centuries; every city state had a mob of squires and stable-hands to draw on who wouldn’t have been allowed out of their parents’ households in less warlike lands. She knew that. And he would remind her of it – but not now.

“I will kill him for you. Bishop.”

That time she really did try to pull away from him. She stopped as soon as he staggered, and moved closer instead.

“I don’t want him dead. Just – gone. Gone to some place where he can’t do any more harm.”

He risked moving a hand long enough to take her chin and force her to look him in the eye. “Be careful of your mercy. He will not hesitate to use it against you.”

“Yes. But he was my friend too once.” She straightened; her expression shifted to an anxious frown as her attention flickered away from him towards the walls. They were calling her as well. “I didn’t come here to talk about Bishop. I came to – settle things between us. In another time, I might have allowed myself the luxury of a month to carry on being angry with you for not breaking that damn portcullis—”

“—Bishop would have killed –”

“—Of course he would,” she continued crisply. “And I would have done what he said, anyway, on the thin hope of salvage. And you didn’t.” She raised her chin. “But what I mean – what I want you to know – is that I value you. More than I can say. Because if one of us runs out of luck before the end, it would be—” She paused. Swallowed. “It would be unbearable if we’d parted on bad terms.”

The flow of words came to an end. Seconds masqueraded as hours as he tried to order his thoughts, and formulate a response at the same time. The abandonment of artifice, irony and indirection that became Farlong so very well in this moment would not work for him. Yet he owed her an answer.

The timing of the next explosion was perfect: a red fire like a brilliant sunset spread across the sky beyond the western wall. The few Greycloaks who hadn’t thrown themselves beneath the parapet watched and cheered.

“Neeshka’s done it,” said Farlong, smiling in relief. Some of the exhaustion around her eyes faded.

“Was that the catapult?”

“Looks like it.” She swivelled back to him. His hands still rested on her shoulders. “Until the bastards build another one. Though Grobnar can make explosive arrows faster than they can hammer in nails.”

The explosion had distracted her, but not long enough. He still didn’t know what to say. It had been decades since someone had last claimed they valued him, or anything of the sort. Worse, he knew that he was dangerously close to believing her.

“Get me to the healer,” he told her. No voice from the grave was necessary to inform him that this was not the response she might have wanted to her declaration of…friendship? Perhaps she hadn’t expected anything at all.

She made no objections, anyway. Merely tilted her head to one side, examined the gash once more, then nodded. She drew his right arm around her shoulder, and rested his left arm on his back. Except for the discomforting proximity of the Sword of Gith, it was not an unpleasant arrangement.

“Can you bear my weight?”

“Of course.” She sounded surprised. “I’m wearing the bracelet. _As instructed_. And I once hauled Elanee over miles of rough ground. I can cope with you for ten yards.”

The headache had lessened, and the world had settled down into its normal dimensions. He still walked at a third of his usual pace, and leant more on Farlong than he needed in order to slow their progress, gain more time to think. He wanted her to know that her words had been neither wasted, nor unwanted. He couldn’t write them off as empty rhetoric, though it might be better for both of them if he did.

They were half-way up the line when he remembered their conversation the previous morning, and knew what he could concede to her. He leant closer, and lowered his voice so that only she would hear him.

“Whatever happens…I trust you completely.”

Her eyelashes flickered. She dropped her speed even further, just as he did, without discussion. “You don’t,” she said softly. “But thank you.”

Her arm tightened around him, and her palm massaged the back of his right hand. The reply was not a rejection.

Only a little way remained. They completed it in silence. Her warmth and nearness dominated his mind, his senses. The ten paces to reach the healer felt as if he were passing through the encroachment of an alien reality into the one he knew.

Then it was over. The world of the Keep and the war recrystallised as they reached the head of the line, and Farlong spoke to the Greycloak there.

“Sorry,” she said lightly, “I’m cutting in. Think you can face life away from the walls a bit longer?”

The man looked up at her, then tried to stand up straight. He had the paleness and listless eyes common among those drained by vampires. “Not sure, Captain.” He tried to grin. “Race you?”

“If you want!”

He shook his head and waved her on. “Nah. I’m doing alright here, I reckon.” The Greycloak held out till they were past, but at the edge of his vision Ammon saw him sliding down the wall to slump half-prostrate at its base.

The healer proved to be a skull-faced acolyte of Tyr. The man’s lips thinned as he regarded him. Ammon stared back.

“I need this man,” said Farlong, without any of her usual preliminaries. “Heal him, please. And restore him.”

The acolyte crossed his arms. He looked exactly like the travelling preacher who used to harangue the crowds in Highcliff on market days when Ammon was a boy. He remembered Darmon arguing with him, matching him point for point. Strange what could provoke nostalgia.

“My divine gifts are limited. I doubt very much the Just God would see this warlock as worthy of any spell.” 

Looked at from a different perspective, Ammon had serious doubts about whether any spell from that particular overblown deity could be worthy of him. He pushed himself up to his full height using Farlong’s shoulder as a brace, and prepared to tell the junior priest exactly what he thought of Tyr. Farlong jumped in first.

“That’s a very interesting theological topic, Brother. Perhaps you could make it the subject of your next sermon?” She sounded genuinely enthusiastic. Anyone who didn’t know her might think her sincere. “By the way, speaking of theology…didn’t I see you healing Sergeant Jalboun earlier tonight?”

“Well – yes…” The acolyte blinked.

“He’s known up in Luskan as Jalboun of the Two Blades. He kills people for money without asking questions first. But I appreciate that _theologically_ , Lord Tyr might see that as being okay.”

Despite being cornered, the acolyte opened his mouth, a mulish look foretelling further opposition. At the same time, Ammon noticed five loaded stretchers being carried towards the field hospital. Or to the mortuary, since they had been located so conveniently close together.

“This is a waste of time,” he said. “Give me a potion, and I will leave you and your blind god to judge the worthiness of each soldier as they come to you.”

The acolyte scowled at him, and addressed his reply to Farlong. “Captain, you ordered the stock of potions to be held in reserve.”

“So I did,” said Farlong; Ammon heard the wide, strained smile even though he couldn’t see it. “And now I have to belay that order. It was only valid as long as the priests and acolytes were able to do their work.”

She held out her hand. The acolyte pressed a vial into it. She kept her hand outstretched until the acolyte added three more.

“Your turn now,” she told the Greycloak at the top of the line.

“Can’t wait, Captain.”

Together he and Farlong walked to an unpeopled space between the temple and the hospital. It was hard to say who was leading whom. He had no desire to linger around the skull-faced acolyte; Farlong seemed glad to get away from him too.

“Gods,” she muttered once they were clear, “I wondered why Oleff was so happy to send him to us for nothing. Normally he bargains like a Sembian…”

He shrugged. “The Tyrrans in Neverwinter have always been a merchant cartel at heart. They trade in divine favour like others do in wine.”

He took one of the potions from her, and broke the seal. The contents was concentrated, and strong, and he felt instantly renewed. He smiled grimly as he felt the flesh knit itself closed over the wound on his head.

Another stretcher went past. The bearers were struggling under the weight of the armoured man. Light glinted on sulphur-shaded hair. The knight lay so still it was impossible to tell if he lived.

“That was Nevalle,” said Farlong. She still had an arm wrapped round him. “I thought he was with Nasher.”

“He was on the walls to the south of the gatehouse. I’m sure he’ll receive the best of care from his fellow Tyrrans.” The sneer at the edge of his voice was gentler than it might have been. At least Nevalle had stirred himself to fight; whether that was the man’s own idea, or Nasher’s, Ammon did not know.

With regret, he stepped away Farlong. Before drawing his falchion, he touched her shoulder in a gesture of – he did not know of what. Thanks, maybe. Or something deeper.

His powers began to gather in anticipation of the fight. The next enemies he chanced upon were not going to exist long enough to regret their misfortune. After an hour away from the walls, he had much ground to make up. “Are you coming?”

Farlong pulled the Sword of Gith free of its reinforced scabbard. The miasma of light around the blade seemed to catch and sparkle against flecks of silver in her dark grey eyes.

“Lead the way.”


	12. Guardians

  1. Guardians



The last hours of night proved harder than the first. Although Garius’s tactics remained fundamentally as stupid as ever, the number of enemies sent against them tripled. Where two or three monsters in one wave had reached the wall-walk, the front line had to cope with nine, or sometimes ten. It became a race to wipe them out before more could join them.

Farlong fought like a dancer in the centre of their section; a band of Ironfist dwarves guarded the entrances to the gatehouse; he again took his stand near Startear’s tower, from the roof of which the signaller was able to provide news of how the battle went elsewhere.

The ditch behind him grew full of the remains of ghouls and skeletons. Black stains defaced the wall where shadows had met their end. Only the vampires were fewer – Garius must have exhausted his supply in the initial assault. But however many of the enemy he blasted into oblivion, they kept coming.

One large ghast seized his manica in its yellow teeth; even after he’d melted its thick flesh into stinking treacle, the jaws gripped fast. He shook the remains of his armguard off along with the remains of the monster.

The dwarves yielded to Greycloak reinforcements under Sergeant Draygood. Farlong’s movements slowed; now she wielded the Sword more like a butcher than a dancer. An attack on the gate was thwarted by archers on the gatehouse roof, and Sand beside them, throwing fireballs and bolts of lightning with a ferocity he hadn’t realised the elf possessed.

“Casavir’s down,” shouted the signaller, “and Light of the Heavens.”

It was not long afterwards that a pack of ghouls driven on by a shadow priest pulled themselves over the parapet. He burned and hacked away the ones foolish enough to approach him. Their hide peeled and wept green pus wherever his fire struck them.

As the last fell, he looked up in time to see two Greycloaks born back over the outer wall beneath the combined weight of five of the creatures. The archers on the gatehouse had seen the plunge, and fired after them; too late for the two soldiers though. Draygood cursed; Farlong looked briefly down through the battlements, then turned away.

Amidst the smell of blood, and broiled flesh, and naphtha, he detected a change in the quality of the air. A lightening. His sense of time passing had not outlasted his return to the battle – but, surely, that greyish tinge behind the limestone crags was the first sign of dawn?

“They’re over the wall at the north end. Shadows and skeletons,” the signaller shouted to him, then sounded an alarm on her trumpet.

“What’s happened?” Farlong called.

“Enemies over the north wall.”

“Is it time, do you think?” She bisected the torso of a ghast as it failed to sneak up behind her. She fought better with the sword than he ever had; but then, he hadn’t been pulled out of bed every day before sunrise to be drilled by the Keep’s focused seneschal.

He saw the wall beneath him crawling with undead like a decaying corpse coated in beetles and black flies. It would be worse elsewhere. No other section was under the guardianship of the Sword of Gith. Or him.

“It’s time,” he confirmed. He looked up at the signaller. “Throw me your spear.”

The woman had been watching the bailey. She drew her brows together in puzzlement. “Sir?”

“Your spear.” It was made of steel from the tip to the end of the haft; it would serve very well.

Still confused, she tossed the weapon down to him. He caught it one-handed, turned and rammed it through the belly of a grasping ghoul, and deep into the mortar of the parapet.

He had only completed one part of the ritual the Illefarn had created in their fear and desperation, but it was a vital part. He released it now. Instantly, the slavering head of the ghoul changed into that of an elderly hard-featured dwarf; then an elven mage; and once more, into the dispassionate, raceless face he knew well from his recent studies.

The illusion faded. He was looking at a dying ghoul again; yet all around it, a web of light was being spun through the stones of the wall. Through the gatehouse, and Startear’s tower, and further – even through the cliffs the castle had been built against. Although he had seen it happen many times before, it still impressed him.

Farlong leaned on a battlement, her hand deeply enmeshed in the web. Did she see the ritual’s creators too? He should have asked her after one of the trials they’d made.

As she closed her eyes, he did the same. They should have warned the Greycloaks, he realised. Too late now. The white flash still felt so intense that his skin prickled, sweat ran down his neck, and the back of his eye sockets stung, as if cleansed with acid. Light could hurt the living as well as the dead.

But it hurt the dead a lot more. When he was able to see again, the wall was clear. Even the stains left by the destroyed shadows had vanished. The web that he had woken sank back into the stonework. It had served its purpose well. If only the ritual could be used more often, and the improvements they’d made to it, the Keep would be nigh on invulnerable. The dwarf Annaeus had known what he was about, for the most part, and his peers; it was the capriciousness of the divine element that was the flaw in the scheme.

He yanked the spear free. Its point was blistered; the metal was full of minute holes like pumice.

“I hope that spear wasn’t a family heirloom,” Farlong called, rubbing light-induced tears from her cheeks and blinking. It hadn’t occurred to him that a Greycloak without rank would possess any family heirlooms. His brother would have mocked him for that. Now that he looked again at the spear, he saw that it was obviously different from the regulation type – better, in fact.

“Nah – I took it from a corpse I met on my way from Conyberry, Captain.” The signaller was on her knees, and had belatedly covered her face with her hands.

“On its way to being a family heirloom then!” Farlong joked absently, while frowning out over the fields where the enemy still loured, gathered in stubborn dark masses.

By rights, the battle should have ended then with the total destruction of hundreds of the enemy through a single act. But the dawn was slow that day, and a cloak of grey fog obscured the sun as it rose.

“They’re advancing again,” he warned.

“Their mistake,” said Farlong. She flexed, and took up the familiar stance of readiness that he’d often seen when they sparred in the practice ground.

It was full daylight before they were able to leave the walls. The ghouls had retreated first; then the skeletons. The shadows and their priests were the last to go, creeping west over the broad hilltop like the tide going out.

All of Farlong’s associates still able to move gathered in the bailey. They looked wrung-out and ragged. As was his custom, he stood a few feet to the left of the Knight Captain; the others likewise disposed themselves as if they were standing round the table in the war-room.

“Casualties?” said Farlong. Kana stepped forward and saluted. The seneschal looked as spent as everyone else, but had a tablet of notes to hand.

“Thirty-two Greycloaks, ten lizard-folk, and eight Ironfist are dead. About a hundred are injured. Most of those injured will have recovered before tonight.”

Ammon knew what was coming; Farlong would have to announce it soon. Strategically, it didn’t matter if the garrison could withstand the attack that would inevitably begin that evening; by that time, either the King of Shadows would be dead, or the cause would be lost anyway.

“I don’t see Casavir, Nevalle or Light of the Heavens,” said Farlong. She was holding herself in an unnaturally stiff posture that he’d seen her use before when she expecting bad news.

“They live, Kalach-Cha,” said the zerth. Her arm was in a sling; Ammon had never investigated how her plane-born abilities contrived to function on the Prime; they didn’t extend as far as resetting a bone, but could help remake a broken Silver Sword when it was convenient.

“Casavir’s resting in his room,” said the druid. “A shadow priest drained him. He was sleeping normally when I left.”

Farlong nodded. Some of her usual fluidity returned to her as she shifted her weight, and rubbed the back of her neck. Relief, he supposed. It was a surprise to discover that he was relieved too. He hadn’t wanted the trio of devout fighters dead, however irritating they were.

And there were excellent tactical reasons to bring a paladin with them to the Merdelain, of course.

To the very heart of the Merdelain. The sunken Illefarn palace of the Mere of Dead Men. He’d strayed into one of its upper chambers once, many years ago, and that had almost cost him his life. The thought of returning…stirred many emotions. All of which were better set aside.

“Resting is what we should all be doing,” said Farlong. “You all know we’ve been looking for a way to strike directly at the Guardian…at the King of Shadows. What most of you may not know—”

“Eh, we’re going through a magic portal into his fortress,” Khelgar interrupted. “Isn’t that right, fiendling?”

“Don’t ask me,” the tiefling responded. The end of her tail twitched. “I heard it from Sand.”

Farlong shook her head. “Well, that’s saved me breath and patience. Is there anyone you _didn’t_ tell, Sand?”

The elf inspected his nails. The hand and arm attached to them were smoke-blackened; the sleeve was torn to ribbons. “Naturally, I realised that Neeshka would be an excellent means of channelling information to a few select individuals.” He drew a loop in the air to indicate everyone present. From the expression on Qara’s face, it was clear to Ammon that the news hadn’t reached her.

“So now you know,” said Farlong. “This is it. I suggest we all go to our rooms to recover while we can. Greycloaks will be sent to rouse us in the early afternoon. Sand, have you—?”

“As commanded, Captain,” said the elf, and pointed to a box at his side. “Sleeping potions. Though I can’t imagine why the idea of teleporting to an underground mausoleum full of Shadow Reavers would affect anyone’s quality of sleep.”

“Sleeping potions?” said Khelgar. “It’s a potion of staying awake I want. Never thought I’d say I’ve had too much of fighting, but last night…” He took off his helmet, and tapped his chin with the top of his fist. His eyes scrunched up until they were the size of ants. “And Khulmar is dead, blast him.”

Ammon let the discussion go on around him without paying attention. The only relevant part had already been covered. He caught Farlong’s eye just as she reached into the box for one of Sand’s potions. She raised her brows, reading something of what he was thinking before he could say a word. He drew closer, and lowered his voice.

“They can leave you stunned for days. You’ll be of no use wandering round the Illefarn palace in a stupor.” He’d tried them at various points in his life, and after a final experiment two years ago had resolved to never touch them again.

“Sand’s promised me that they won’t. Besides, I’ve seen the ingredients list. Anything that expensive has to be good.” She smiled at his look of incredulity. “It might even not taste of dead bat.”

He frowned at the box of potions. Sand had always appeared to be an able alchemist, but then, he’d also taught at the Academy. That argued against both his competence and general character.

“Where did he source the recipe?”

“A book of Evereskan alchemy.” There was a chance it would work then, and not to excess. “I’m going to risk it. Either I’ll be half-asleep because of a potion, or I’ll be half-asleep because I spent the morning watching the sunlight move across the ceiling.”

The circle broke up. All save Kana headed straight for the Keep. Of those at the briefing, all save the zerth had claimed a vial for themselves.

He looked around. The edges of the castle looked blurred, and not only because of the damp mist that still hovered over the ground and in the crevasses of the cliffs. A steady ache pulsed in his head, a side-effect of Farlong’s ritual power. He was drained. He had pushed his powers as far as they could go; further, in truth. In the last hour of the fight, he’d been close to relying on his falchion alone.

He ran a hand over his face. In theory, nothing could stop him sleeping when his exhaustion was so complete. Yet to judge by experience…

He grabbed a vial of sleeping potion, and walked numbly up to the main doors of the Keep.


	13. Mementoes

  1. Mementoes



His armour lay on the bed, clean and newly oiled through the efforts of whoever in the castle was awake. Letting anyone else touch it would normally be anathema to him, but today he’d had no other option. Light from the four windows drew his attention to the deepest of the scratches; there was a memory attached to most of them.

He ate the last of the breakfast Farlong’s steward had brought him as he pulled on his clothes. It tasted of nothing in particular. He didn’t have any patience for food this afternoon, and yet knew that he ought to eat. Whatever awaited them in the depths of the Merdelain, it would not be picnic hampers. A cupful of the foul fermented drink from the utmost west cleared his mind, then another one of water diluted the bitterness of it on his tongue.

After his armour was on, he turned to the chest that rested solid and squat beside his bed. Kneeling, he released the wards and undid the catches. There were a few items in it that he would regret losing: a mace, a broken sabre, a book with unusual properties he’d discovered in his most recent flight from the Host Tower, a set of carved Halruaan figurines – yet they would only be an encumbrance where he was bound.

The amulet had fallen to the bottom of the chest, and its chain had become twisted around the haft of the mace. He almost left it where it was, then sighed, pulled it loose, and stowed it in a pocket. Next he located his spare knife and clipped it to his belt. Lastly, his fingers closed around a silken pouch. He shook the contents out onto his palm.

A ring. The band was made from gold mined in the Sword Mountains. The black stone was jet, said to have been found on the banks of the Never by a distant ancestor as she waited for news from the Battle of Blackbridge.

The seal ring of his family. He rarely wore it: there were no enchantments enmeshed in either stone or metal that would make it worthwhile. And seeing the thing always carried him back to the night he’d taken it from his nephew’s cold hand. Nevertheless, he couldn’t leave it behind for some scavenger to steal and sell in a Waterdhavian flea-market. Or for Nasher to gloat demurely over.

That was it. The end was hurtling nearer, much faster than had seemed possible two days ago when he’d waited for Farlong and brooded.

As he made for the door, the small mirror on the table showed him a glimpse of his reflection.

The frown lines across his forehead seemed deeper than ever. What had his eldest brother said about him? ‘He looks like a butcher’s hook. With a beard’. A mistress in Amruthar had told him he resembled one of the gods of the Mulhorandi pantheon; that had seemed like a compliment until he recalled that the particular one she meant was always shown with the head of a snarling wolf.

He decided not to speculate on the reasons for his sudden interest in his appearance; in the last battle, it would not matter how old or harsh he looked. Anything else was absurd vanity.

On the long walk down to the main hall, he trailed his hand over the stonework. Whispers chased him down the staircases. Sometimes he thought that if he listened closely enough to the voices in the walls, he would be able to hear, not merely the present, but the distant past too – waves of fossilised sound trapped in crystal dust. Generations coming and going as far back as the construction of the Keep, or earlier still.

But that was a scholar’s idle fancy. Today he had to be nothing except a warlock, refined and simplified so that his fracturing in that first battle in West Harbour would not reoccur.

His resolve was immediately tested as he entered the main hall and found Farlong there. Not on her own, at least, but with her Harbourman friend. The big sergeant had a bandage round his neck, and was holding a large wooden cup and a folded piece of cloth as if he didn’t know what they were.

“But you’re coming back,” he was saying. “You’ve got to. Or I’ll be the only one left.”

Farlong had her back to the stairs. She hadn’t noticed his presence yet. The sergeant was too busy staring glumly at the cup to notice anything.

“I’m not planning on dying in there,” said Farlong. Her voice echoed against the vaulted ceiling. “But if there’s some reason I can’t come back right away…I’d rather you kept them. And you won’t be alone. Orlen’s here. Tarmas will be back from the Gate as soon as it’s safe.”

“You know what I mean. First Amie, then Lorne, then the rest of my family, and Kipp last night…I can’t bear it sometimes.” Farlong hung her head; Bevil at last looked up from the oddments he was carrying, and saw him.

“It will get better, you know. Eventually. I hope.” She turned in response to some signal from her friend. Ammon stepped forward. She was wearing yet another set of leathers; the Sword of Gith was already slung over her shoulder. He rarely saw her without it now.

“You’re prepared. Good. Have you spoken to Aldanon?” he asked, not wanting to be drawn into the previous topic of conversation.

“Just now. He’s convinced it’ll work.” She gave a wry smile. “And so are Harcourt and Sand.”

He repressed his own answering smile. “We should go without delay. Every moment we lose is certain to benefit Garius.”

She nodded. “The summons to the war-room are about to ring. Let’s go.” She sounded almost as brisk as the seneschal. Reflecting what she had received from him, he realised. How would she have behaved if he’d given in to the smile? “Bevil, you’re welcome to sit in if you want. This may be the shortest meeting I’ve ever attended.”

“I’ve got to go and check on the sentries. But I’ll come and say goo – I mean, I’ll come and see you off, if I can. In the library?” The sergeant tucked the cup and the cloth under his arm. Ammon saw the edge of an embroidered hood. It was a cloak, he realised.

“Yes. The library.” Farlong seemed to have recovered her energy; her eyes were clear. Still, her movements betrayed tension. If her nature had something of a jackdaw about it, then today it was huddled on an icy branch, feathers awry, and not scouting out new lands for curiosities.

“I’ll see you, then.” Bevil started retreating to the main doors, but stopped. “Oh, I forgot. Uh…your knife. Here. I took it off Dremar before he could lose it.” He held the knife out to him politely, hilt first, but looking anxious the while, as if he were offering a bone to a Nessian warhound.

“Keep it. I have another. Unless our Captain wants it.” He put less ironic inflection than he might have on ‘Captain’. Under the tiefling’s influence, Farlong had more than one knife concealed about her. Involuntarily, his gaze dropped to her inner thigh where he knew she would have bound a fine blade of well-tempered red steel. When he looked back up, her eyes were on him.

“Nah – it looks as if you’re being showered with mementoes today.” She broke off eye-contact, as she returned her attention to the Harbourman.

“That knife belongs in battle against the undead,” Ammon told him, “not framed on a wall.” He paused, and tried not to frown. “Though you can do whatever you care to with it.”

Farlong began to walk slowly backwards towards the corridor that led to the war-room. “In justice to the Harvest Cup, I remember Khelgar using it to brain a shadow priest near Fort Locke. It was never quite the same after that. Neither was the shadow priest.”

The sergeant seemed about to say something more. He was looking at him. Before Bevil could extract any more near-promises about keeping people safe, and in particular ones about keeping Farlong safe, Ammon left the hall.

“Harvest Cup?” he asked Farlong when they were alone.

“And Harvest Cloak. Bevil and another friend and I won a competition in West Harbour – oh – three years ago. Three years to the day, in fact. Those were the prizes.”

She didn’t sound happy about it. He assumed that the ‘other friend’ was dead, or he’d surely have encountered them. If it occasionally seemed that the twin goddesses of fortune had taken one fate, and shared it out between them, allotting all the good luck to Farlong, and all the ill to him, very little consideration would suggest that this was not the case.

“Nasher sent for me just after midday,” she said as she opened the door to the war-room. No one was inside.

“Trying to rule the war from his bed chamber? Ignore him.”

She went to her usual chair, though only to lean on its back. He folded his arms, and waited. Watched. Her lashes were lowered, hiding her eyes; he hands clasped each other.

“Well, at the start he was complimentary. Wanted me to convey his thanks and praise to the garrison for the fine job they did last night. That kind of thing.” She looked across at him. “Then he moved on to you.”

“Less complimentary, I’m sure.” He heard the sneer in his own voice. “We fell into an argument yesterday. I know exactly what he thinks of me. Did he read you out a list of my offences?” That thought was – unpleasant. Not Nasher’s smug sententiousness, but the idea of Farlong listening, and changing. Not being the person who had run to him in the early hours of the morning.

“It was odd. He talked about how putting you on trial in Neverwinter would be unwise, since it would most likely result in trial by combat. You’d have the right.” Her lips curled up. He suspected the amusement in her glance was reflected in his own. A trial by combat could produce exactly the result Nasher didn’t want, unless he had a powerful desire to see his champion turned to kennel meat.

“So if not a trial, what does he intend for me? A divine curse, a paladin’s mace, hired assassins in the night—”

None of the possibilities troubled him. Nasher was barely able to enforce his brand of justice within the bounds of his small northern city.

“I think he’d struggle to find an assassin willing to take the contract. No – what he said was that a quarter of a century ago, Ammon Jerro was assumed dead in the Mere. And he thought it would be better if there were a return to the old status quo.”

He didn’t know why he felt surprised. Why hadn’t he anticipated such a turn of events? “Nasher wants you to kill me. So.” He straightened his back, and lifted his head. It was an aggressive posture, and the wrong one for the circumstances, he knew, but he fell into it before he could stop himself. “Will you?”

Farlong gave him a quizzical look. “Yeah, of course I will. I always tell my victims what I’m planning well in advance. Gives them a sporting chance.”

“Farlong—”

“Don’t be—” she drew the air in sharply through her teeth, and glared at the table. “No, I’m not. How could you even—”

“Perhaps you should.” She stared at him. “To secure your position. The castle and lands are important to you.” They were important to him as well. His granddaughter had spent the last months of her life slaving over the roads and walls. He’d poured his time, his powers and his knowledge into them as well. Nasher would love to hand them over to one of his most biddable lackeys once the real fight was over, for sure. The pious Nevalle or the idle Sir Darmon.

“The castle isn’t the only thing that’s important to me,” said Farlong flatly. “Besides, I don’t think Nasher expects me to kill you. I’m the last person he’d give that task to, even if you can’t see that.” She picked up a map that lay rolled up on top of a heap of other papers, unfurled it, and pretended to study it. While she frowned at the vellum, he forced himself to unfold his arms, then move nearer to her.

“What else could he have intended?” He spoke as softly as he could. Her body language relaxed.

“To give you a warning. Or offer a kind of deal. He had to know I’d tell you what he said.”

He leaned across, and gently pried the map from her hands. It was a late twelfth century version of the Merdelain. West Harbour was there, and Red Fallows Watch, as well as the southern tip of his family’s former estate. He put it to one side.

“He merely wants me away from Neverwinter – away from the Sword Coast.”

“That’s my interpretation.” She hugged the back of her chair, resting her chin against one of the carved finials.

Leave Neverwinter… By the Abyss, he’d been absent often enough in the past in pursuit of his own interests and studies. Would he submit to Nasher on this point? He could simply wait the old ruler out; assuming the poison didn’t kill him, politics might.

“It hardly matters,” he said at last. “Aldanon designed a portal _into_ the demesne of the Guardian. He has nothing of a portal _out_.” He put his hand on her arm. Few of the women he’d known would say he’d behaved well towards them, but at least he’d never encouraged them into the kind of trap into which he was pushing Farlong. Into which she had to walk.

The summons rang. Soon the war-room would be a hubbub of voices and complaints. He took his seat, just as Farlong took hers.

“So, in view of that,” she said, and a shift in her tone let him know that he was speaking to the Captain of Crossroad Keep, and not her creator, “can we leave anyone behind?”


	14. Portals

  1. Portals



It emerged that they could not do without the services of any of Farlong’s crew. His attempt to maroon the sorceress at the Keep failed when the girl herself insisted on her inclusion. So much for that.

Although the meeting barely lasted longer than it took everyone to arrive, it ended with half the group rushing away on trivial errands that they should have performed earlier. He would have been more scathing, except that he knew he had his own errand to complete before they departed.

Farlong looked puzzled as he turned away from the library.

“I need a new arm guard,” he told her.

“Ah, yes. That cliff ghast ate the last one, didn’t it? I think leather confuses them.” She spoke lightly; her face told another story. If she’d looked like that a year ago, he wouldn’t have let her out of his sight in case she tried to run away.

“I will meet you in the library.”

For the moment, he felt calm. Impervious to the flurries of anxiety that he’d seen in the war-room. The preparations and wrangling had seemed little different to the usual business of life in the castle. Although the fate he’d bargained for should be looming very close, he did not feel it yet. A measure of indifference was possible, especially if he focused on the former Guardian, the King of Shadows, and let go of everything else. It had to be like his dive from the North Tower. No space for consideration. No space for fear. Watch the target…and leap.

On the way, he passed a few Greycloaks laden with satchels of potions and ammunition, bound for the library. One man caught his notice – the archer from the gatehouse, and the battle afterwards, who had briefly seemed close to finding a weak point in Bishop’s twisted mind. Their eyes met; Ammon almost stopped to commend him for his service. But then, the boy was dead, and Bishop had escaped, and both the archer and himself had been fulfilling commitments of one sort or another. He continued without saying anything.

The door of the upper armoury was warded, but yielded to his touch. He went straight to a chest against the far wall, and rooted through the contents – arm guards and bracers made of various materials, and in an unusual mixture of styles, all smelling of camphor and pine resin – until he found an acceptable replacement for the one he’d lost. It would extend from his wrist to above his elbow; a wave of minute hardened bubbles on its surface indicated that the hide had once been forcibly parted from a wyvern. The only drawback was the irritating system of leather ties to keep it in place.

Footsteps approached the door. He thought of Farlong, and when the door opened, that was who it was. She still looked on edge. His blood chilled as he speculated on what could have gone wrong.

“Has the portal failed?” Perhaps the trio of arcanists had been deluding themselves; perhaps all Aldanon’s calculations had been based on a fundamental error. The man was more than capable of it. If so, they’d have to move onto the much more dangerous back-up plan: approach the palace through the Plane of Shadow.

“No, nothing like that,” she hurried to assure him. “Everything’s fine. But I remembered the wyvern arm guard was there, and thought I’d check you’d found it.” She hesitated at the threshold of the library, and watched him slowly draw the ties into rough knots. “Let me help.”

Then she was right next to him. She pulled off her gauntlets, and dropped them on a bench. Her hair smelled of that fragrant oil she used; she was close enough for him to feel a trace of warmth from her body.

To start with, she undid the clumsy knots he’d made with his left hand. Her face was tilted down to focus on what she was doing; the little he could see of it was serious, absorbed in the task.

“Tell me how tight you want them.” She drew the first set of thongs into a neat hunter’s knot. Her arm brushed against his.

“Tighter.” Her eyes flicked up to his. She nodded.

There were four sets of ties. He kept very still as she worked. Felt the warmth of her, and knew that soon she was going to step away. She was wearing no gorget, not even a simple strip of leather. The usual rebellious braid had escaped to rest unguarded on her neck.

“Done,” she said. “Does it feel secure?”

He tested it. “Yes.” Then, before she could move out of his reach, added, “The binding on your armour is loose.”

“Is it?” She looked blank for a heartbeat. Then, eyes widening, she said, “Oh yes. It is. Please…check it for me.”

“You are sure?”

She only nodded. The anxiety of earlier had changed its colours. Her eyes were still wide, unblinking.

He gave up on pretence. Pushed his hand between the laces on her side, so that it lay between the fine leather of her brigandine, and the silk of her shirt, and took one step forward, to close the last of the distance between them. He kissed her neck first, low near her collarbone, and kissed her again and again, up to the smooth edge of her jaw.

A glance showed him her expression. It seemed distant, regal. Her long lashes shadowed the tops of her cheekbones.

He expected her to apologise politely, talk about a mistake, an error. But then her eyes opened. She cupped his face, and leant in, and her lips touched his.

Each following kiss was deeper. They pressed against each other, her breast against his chest; he let his hand stray from her waist to her hip, and drew her against him there too. Beneath the aroma of the oil was her natural smell, warm, and inviting, and human.

He knew they had to stop. But not yet. They could afford a little longer.

It was footsteps on the stairs that made them step apart. They waited, watching each other. His world had changed, exactly when he needed it to remain stable. But when he saw the glow on her skin, and her shining eyes, and knew he was the reason for both, he could not regret it.

The door was pushed back, and Casavir came in. At least it wasn’t the tiefling. He looked between them, then went in silence to retrieve some oddment from a weapons stand. He stopped at the door, and gave them a questioning look.

“We’ll follow you directly,” said Farlong, not moving an inch.

As soon as the knight had gone, she returned to him. Wrapped her arms around his waist.

“We must—” he began.

“I know. Just one more minute. Give me that much.”

So he did. He pulled her close again, and buried his face in her shoulder. Her fingers traced patterns on the nape of his neck. They said nothing. The darkness he found there, his eyes closed and the surface of her leather armour rubbing against his forehead, was deeper and more welcome than he could have imagined. If death could be like that, he would have no reason to shun it. Though gods and devils had other ideas, and not only for him.

He drew back. She let him, but not before she’d kissed his cheek, and the corner of his mouth, and traced a line down the side of his face, from his temple to his jaw.

She half-turned to the door, then looked round to him again.

“Go.” He felt as if he were concussed again. He needed more _time_. In response to her puzzlement, he added, “I will find you downstairs.”

She hesitated, then nodded. Before she could disappear, he noticed her gauntlets on the bench where she’d abandoned them. “Lila.”

As he handed them over, he resisted the temptation to take another kiss. He knew he wouldn’t have stopped at one.

“I’ll see you soon,” she said.

“You will,” he promised her.

She left, and he was alone. He leant on the wide sill of the nearest window, and stared out across the bailey. Pleasant as that interval had been, the timing could not have been worse.

When he’d left the war-room, he’d been as prepared for the end as he could be. The road was clear as crystal before him. Now – now it was fractured, and the reflections and spectral lights in the twisted, shattered surfaces seemed to offer a thousand different paths. On some, he was sure, the dead would be waiting for him. His family would be waiting for him to ask him why they died. _How sure are you it was only your soul you sold?_

In the bailey, the Greycloak sentries moved slowly along their beat. A group of lizardfolk sat and fletched arrows in the shadow of a tower. Proud in its restored defences, Crossroad Keep looked more unassailable than ever. He had hoped that the sight of the guards and gates and fortifications would remind him of what he was supposed to be protecting; instead, they seemed as solid as the roots of the mountains, and it was him that was cracking. Breaking.

Acting on instinct more than thought, he let some of his power seep into the jet signet ring. It began to glow; the smell of burning coal filled the air. Without pausing to reconsider, he held the stone against the flesh on the inside of his left wrist. Kept it there until he felt it sting, then waited some more.

A black and red brand in the shape of a hawk remained, vivid and harsh on his pale skin.

The pain did not change the world back to what it had been. Or to what he had tried to believe it was. But it brought him a measure of coolness. The ice sheet he had to traverse would last a little longer. A single entanglement with hope couldn’t undo him all at once.

He slammed the armoury door shut behind him, and sped down the stairs. The library was full to capacity; somehow the gnome had contrived to fit the blade golem construct inside in the far corner. Everyone chosen for the mission was present, as well as the Greycloaks distributing the satchels and other supplies. Aldanon and his precise secretary occupied a small area that had been cleared of tables and bookshelves.

Nevalle was there, out of his oversized armour and looking jaundiced. So too was the seneschal.

He passed them both before stepping round Casavir and Elanee to near Aldanon. The white-haired scholar was reading aloud from an old grimoire, while his assistant chalked a mixture of runes and elvish script on the floor. The runes he didn’t recognise; the script was written in the Illefarn dialect, and resembled an ancient anthem of praise from the age before the creation of the Guardian.

Too late to interrupt the men, and ask them exactly how they’d constructed their spell. Not that Aldanon would ever be able to give him a straight answer.

He retreated to a neighbouring desk, and leant against it, observing the whole room with his back to the wall. Farlong was working her way round her companions, smiling, sometimes joking, or else behaving with a funereal sobriety, as when she spoke to Casavir, the druid, and Nevalle.

Her composure did not seem to be a façade. Her hands hung relaxed at her sides, except once when she grinned and exchanged salutes with Kana. He gazed at her, willing her to acknowledge him, or better, to come and be near him.

And then she did come. After shaking hands very carefully with the construct at Grobnar’s urging, she wove across the cluttered library, and leant against the desk beside him, the edge of her hand touching the edge of his.

The hilt of the Sword was immaculate; the blade hidden in its scabbard was presumably so as well. If it were his again, and he were holding it now, he wondered what it would do. Sometimes he woke at night with the brightness of its explosion in West Harbour itching at the back of his eyes.

The woman next to him had been an infant then. Perhaps he should feel more troubled by that – but he wasn’t, and nor did he feel inclined to manufacture new obstacles to keep him from what he wanted; there were enough real ones without the need to invent more.

“You look calm,” he said. He did not intend to sound accusatory; still, he suspected that a note of sharpness escaped into his voice.

“I am, I think.” She frowned in thought. “I wasn’t before. Not at all. But there was a question that I needed to know the answer to, and now I do. That makes this—” she gestured to the space where the portal would appear “—easier, somehow.”

A Greycloak approached; it was the archer again. Ammon nodded to him curtly. He gave them each a satchel of supplies, then saluted, and left the library.

“Are you happy with the answer?”

“Completely.” He let his hand rest on hers. Perhaps he shouldn’t – Nevalle was present, would see, and would no doubt report back to Nasher. Right now, he didn’t care. For the sake of Farlong, he thought he should try to.

“This could make your life more difficult. Afterwards.” That there would be an afterwards seemed more feasible than it had yesterday. He would fight for that _afterwards_ , as well as for all the usual reasons.

“Not more difficult than what we’re about to face.” She paused. Shot him a sideways glance. “You aren’t so calm.”

He considered how to answer that, though she had stated a truth rather than making an enquiry. Black and silver smoke began to trickle upwards from the library floor. The empty air between Harcourt and Aldanon shimmered; viewed through the centre of the disturbance, a pile of books contorted into a free-standing spiral.

“This was meant to be everything.” And now it might not be. But that had opened a portal to the past as much as to the future. Yesterday he had dreamed of a murdered man announcing the reveille. What else might wake if the reveille sounded in his soul?

“It doesn’t have to be,” she said. She knotted her fingers round his.

“Nevalle is watching,” he warned her. That was a miscalculation of a grand sort; in response, she leaned in and kissed his cheek. Her lips curled up in amusement. Occasionally, miscalculations could be tolerable. More than tolerable. “It’s time.”

The smoke was pouring from the floor in streams. It rippled and writhed; the remoulded space forced it into a vortex. Particles from the curling outer rings were spat out like sparks, and flew across the room, landing and melding with people and objects.

He straightened, and moved closer, letting Farlong’s hand loose as he did so. Behind him, he heard her companions crowding closer.

The eye of the vortex at first appeared to contain merely a spectrum of colour tending towards blue and violet. By concentrating on a still clot of black in its centre, and blocking out the chattering voices of the gnome and the tiefling and Aldanon himself, a vision of the place beyond the smoke began to clarify.

A stone-lined underground chamber, walkways between oblong pools of water in a style characteristic of the Illefarn. Geometric carvings in a strip around the walls. That had to be it.

“It has worked,” he told Farlong. She nodded, and smiled tightly. She slung her satchel over her shoulder, and moved to take up a position across from him, in front of the portal.

“How long will it stay open?” she asked. She eyed the unpredictable billows of the vortex nervously.

Aldanon shrugged with cheerful heedlessness. “Difficult to say. Artificial portals are normally very unstable. This one should last more than a day, but, of course, there is every possibility that its focus could subtly shift from minute to minute; at the moment, it will take you to the Illefarn Palace; by lunchtime it could be dropping people off a cliff in the Anauroch Desert.”

The gnome started to say something.

“Then enough talk – let’s go.” He stared at the gnome until he stopped burbling about portals to valleys of lava or some other ridiculous subject, then turned to Farlong. Inclined his shoulders towards her in the kind of informal court bow that had once come naturally to him. “Captain.”

She drew herself up, and, turning, as tendrils of black and silver reached for her like embracing arms, she stepped through the vortex.

He followed her.


End file.
